They save things like syntax until the very end, right before they decide to submit this as an actual JEP instead of a JEP Draft. This JEP entered the Draft stage only a few hours ago.
All that is to say -- your comment makes sense, but you are criticizing the part of this JEP Draft that is not only the least relevant to the discussion, but the thing that is most likely to change before it exits the Draft stage. Oftentimes, they even put in placeholder syntax to highlight this fact.
I'd limit criticisms of syntax until they submit this JEP for actual review.
Seems very intuitive to me (and same as C#).