Michael Zheng continues to make history.<\/p>\n
The Columbia senior and Delbarton product won his second-straight NCAA Singles Tournament title a week ago on Nov. 23.<\/p>\n
Zheng defeated SMU\u2019s Trevor Svajda in the final, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 for his 19th all-time tournament win, surpassing Somdev Devvarman of Virginia who finished with 18 career wins in 2008.<\/p>\n
The 2021 NJSIAA state singles tournament winner, Zheng cemented his legacy as one of the top collegiate men\u2019s tennis players of all time as he became the ninth male to repeat as an NCAA champion. The last to do it was USC\u2019s Steve Johnson in 2011-12.<\/p>\n
Zheng is the 10th player overall to win multiple championships. With his run, he also became the first four-time All-American in Ivy League men\u2019s tennis history.<\/p>\n
The tournament was held at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely an amazing accomplishment, it\u2019s definitely something I wouldn\u2019t have thought about in my freshman year,\u201d Zheng told USTA.com. \u201cObviously it\u2019s not something you see every day, so it just feels amazing to make history for myself and for Columbia as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zheng won his last three matches in the tournament in three sets. He defeated Michigan State\u2019s Ozan Baris in the quarterfinals in comeback fashion after the two met in the final last November.<\/p>\n
Zheng\u2019s back-to-back NCAA singles title came after a strong summer where he won three Challenger titles in Tiburon, Columbus and Chicago. He also won his opening round match in the Qualifying Rounds of the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
With his singles title, Zheng qualifies for the Collegiate Player Wild Card Playoffs in June. The winner of the four-player bracket will get an automatic bid to the Main Draw of the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
Zheng has a current live ATP pro ranking of No. 190.<\/p>\n
On the women\u2019s side, Harvard\u2019s Stephanie Yakoff won her opening round match, but fell in three sets in the second round. Yakoff won the NJSIAA state singles tournament three times during her career at Fort Lee.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Team USA was announced recently as well for the 18th edition of the Master\u2019U BNP Paribas Championship from Dec. 5-7 in Reims, France.<\/p>\n
Of the six men and women representing the red, white and blue, two are from New Jersey in Columbia\u2019s Nicolas Kotzen and Stanford\u2019s Samir Banerjee.<\/p>\n
Kotzen was an All-State performer and team state champion at Newark Academy. Banerjee played just his freshman of high school tennis at Ridge, but he still managed to earn All-State honors as well.<\/p>\n
Zheng\u2019s 2025 NCAA Singles Tournament<\/p>\n
First Round<\/b><\/p>\n
Zheng, def. Hugo Car, South Florida, 6-4, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Second Round<\/b><\/p>\n
Zheng, def. Sebastian Eriksson, Texas, 6-3, 6-3.<\/p>\n
Quarterfinals<\/b><\/p>\n
Zheng, def. Ozan Baris, Michigan State, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Semifinals<\/b><\/p>\n
Zheng, def. Paul Ichauspe, Princeton, 6-3, 5-7, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Final<\/b><\/p>\n
Zheng, def. Trevor Svajda, SMU, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.<\/p>\n
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com<\/a> with a subscription<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Zheng continues to make history. The Columbia senior and Delbarton product won his second-straight NCAA Singles Tournament…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":418165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[62,1464,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-418164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115646772413518328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}