Michael Zheng

Michael Zheng (Chinese: 郑瑞 pinyin: Zhèng Ruì, born January 27, 2004) is an American professional tennis player. He has a career-high ATP singles ranking of No. 106 achieved on August 24, 2026 and a doubles ranking of No. 490 reached on August 25, 2025.

Early life Zheng was born to Joe Zheng and Mei. His parents emigrated from Hubei, China, to the United States. He was raised in Montville, New Jersey. Zheng attended Delbarton School, where he won the state singles tennis championship in 2021. For his senior year, he transferred to Dwight Global Online School in order to accommodate his travel demands for tennis.

College In 2025–26, Zheng was a senior playing tennis at Columbia University. In the 2022–23 season, his first year at Columbia, he became the first first-year student athlete at the school to be named an ITA All-American, in addition to being the first Ivy League tennis player to win Ivy League Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, and First-Team All-Ivy in singles and doubles all in the same season.

He represented Columbia at the 2023 NCAA tennis tournament in singles, where he was eliminated by Michigan's Ondřej Štyler in the Round of 16. In his sophomore season, Zheng reached the final of the 2024 NCAA Division I tennis men's singles championships, where he lost to Filip Planinšek of Alabama. In the start of his junior year, the NCAA decided to move up the individual NCAA tournaments to the fall season instead of the spring season. There he once again reached the final of the Division I tennis men's singles championships. On November 24, 2024, he defeated Ozan Baris of Michigan State to become the first NCAA singles champion from Columbia since 1906, and the first Ivy League NCAA singles champion since 1922. On November 23, 2025, Zheng defeated Trevor Svajda of SMU to become the first back-to-back NCAA champion since Steve Johnson in 2011 & 2012.

Career 2022: Juniors

Zheng reached the final of the Wimbledon boys' singles tournament in 2022, losing in the final to Mili Poljičak.

2023–25: Challenger titles In June 2023, Zheng reached his first ATP Challenger final at the 2023 Caribbean Open, losing to Kei Nishikori. In May 2025, Zheng reached the final of the 2025 Little Rock Challenger, losing to Patrick Kypson. In July, Zheng reached his first Challenger doubles final at the 2025 Cranbrook Tennis Classic with Theodore Winegar. In August, Zheng won his first Challenger title in Chicago, defeating Hsu Yu-hsiou in the final. He then won two more Challenger titles at Columbus and Tiburon with a 15 matches win streak.

2026: Major debut and third round, top 125 Zheng made it through three rounds of qualifying matches, including a tight 4–6, 6–3, 7–6(12–10) three-set win over Lukáš Klein, to make the main draw at the 2026 Australian Open, his first main draw appearance at a Grand Slam. In the first round, he defeated Sebastian Korda in five sets, marking his first win at a Grand Slam main draw. He qualified for the 2026 French Open, making his main draw debut at Roland Garros. He also qualified and reached the third round at the 2026 Wimbledon Championships, on his debut, upsetting 26th seed, home favorite and British No. 1 Cameron Norrie and then fellow qualifier Nicolas Mejia.

Performance timeline

Singles

ATP Challenger and ITF World Tennis Tour finals

Singles: 7 (4 titles, 3 runner-ups) LegendATP Challenger Tour (3–2)ITF WTT (1–1)Finals by surfaceHard (4–2)Clay (0–1)

Doubles: 3 (1 title, 2 runner-ups) LegendATP Challenger Tour (0–2)ITF WTT (1–0)Finals by surfaceHard (1–2)Clay (0–0)

Junior Grand Slam finals

Singles: 1 (runner-up)