In his freshman campaign, Zheng nabbed Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year honors in a breakout season that earned him a trip to the NCAA championships. The following year, he built on that success by making a run to the NCAA singles final. As a junior, he entered the history books as Columbia’s first NCAA singles champion of the modern era, ending a program drought dating back to 1906.
“He has an even keeled personality. Even when things go wrong, which they always do in tennis and in life, he always kind of takes it in stride,” Endelman says of Zheng. “He has a really, really nice way about him. I actually love his sense of humor. He has a way of busting my chops a little bit, and the other guys on the team. I just like how he’s got kind of a quiet confidence and composure, and how respectful he is to everyone.”
The trajectory seems even more impressive when considering the push and pull of being on court and in the classroom at an Ivy League school. Yet for Zheng, the challenge of the workload and finding time management solutions served as the impetus to continually scale new heights.
“I think an underrated aspect is academics. People think it’s super hard, but I think it actually makes you better, I think, when you have to kind of balance everything together at the same time,” he says. “It’s when you’re traveling for these events, you have so much downtime, so something to take your mind off the tennis, I think, just helps you perform better on court.”
