Idk, you get to point where you literally don’t even think about it. I was never as good as OP (more in the 20-30s range), but even then there were algorithms that I can done so many thousands of times that I barely even needed to register that there was a pattern. Muscle memory kicks in and just takes care of it.

I haven’t been into it for the past few years, but once I stopped practicing daily, I’d do periodic “check-ins” to see if I still remembered how to solve it. At one point I had gone like 6 months without touching the cube, and was still able to easily solve it. I didn’t even quite remember what the algorithms were or what I was looking for, but muscle memory seems to remember for a lot longer lol. So it doesn’t surprise me that it doesn’t phase him much. Not unless he was really hammered.