The Old Man who was giving a Pro Contract to Tezuka (Siegmund who is also the one who handles Volk)
Was also disappointed in Tezuka's Performance in 1st and Early Second Set. He expected better from him.
Old man doesn't really know what he's talking about tbh.
Isn't it implied by the whole sequence in 312? Siegfried->Lendoll->Volk ("He knows what to do") then Yukimura predicting that Tezuka would finally aim at him "heartlessly" in the very next chapter?
Tezuka has been testing out various shots and none worked. The final evolution is realizing that he has to go against his very nature. Yukimura knew that it was one of the possibilities that's why he was able to react, but he didn't know when exactly it will hit or if at all. In fact right before that Yukimura was trying to guess whether he would hit right or left.
Siegfried was just talking shit out of frustration. Then Lendoll reminisced and tried to give Tezuka a life lesson on the pressures of being a pro, but Volk basically said stfu he knows that.
Then the scene with Ryoma in 314 talks about emotions and finishes with Tezuka saying "that's right, I wanna live in the world of tennis, I won't lose". Tezuka promptly aces by serving RIGHT AT YUKIMURA and surprising him with the speed. How can you explain the speed of his serve going up, otherwise?
That's why I call this part not well written. Tezuka's attempt to beat Future has up to that point been referred to as trying to "rewrite the future", and towards the end both Yukimura and Atobe framed Tezuka's comeback as his success in "redrawing the future". So it appears that the "upgrade" is linked to beating Future, but because of the way it was written it just didn't come across well and it just caused a lot of confusion.
Now if we look at the other parts of the match. Like the smile Tezuka had since he liked the challenge Yukimura posed, the wholeass character song blaring throughout the chapter while he was perfecting Ultimate, Lendoll fanboying and calling them both amazing players,
"coming to understand painfully well how badly the other wants to win", "coming this far and still having such unwavering concentration..." Tezuka was pushed and actually tried, as befitting his final curtain call. And it took PoT MS god Yukimura a set of buffs to be able to pull that off.
Speaking of which, wasn't this a call back to a similar scene in the original series? Was it against Atobe or Sanada?