{"id":527492,"date":"2026-03-08T21:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/527492\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T21:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:20:12","slug":"michael-zheng-named-2026-hurd-award-recipient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/527492\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Zheng Named 2026 Hurd Award Recipient"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>INDIAN WELLS, Calif. \u2013 Columbia men&#8217;s tennis senior <a href=\"https:\/\/gocolumbialions.com\/sports\/mens-tennis\/roster\/michael-zheng\/20567\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"20567\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Zheng<\/a> has been named the Universal Tennis Foundation&#8217;s 2026 Hurd Award Champion, as announced by the foundation on Friday afternoon at the BNP Paribas Open.<br \/>\n\u200b<br \/>\nIntroduced by Mark Hurd in 2017, the UTR Foundation Hurd Award is a pair of $100,000 grants awarded annually to one male and one female American tennis player. Hurd launched the awards to support young-adult tennis players in their transition from college tennis to the world stage of professional tennis.<br \/>\n\u200b<br \/>\nZheng, the back-to-back NCAA Singles National Champion, burst onto the international scene earlier this year when he made his debut in the main draw of a major tournament, advancing to the second round of the Australian Open. Recently, he moved up four spots on the ATP ranking to 145, a career-best. His UTR rating of 14.90 is the highest among men&#8217;s tennis college players.<br \/>\n\u200b<br \/>\nBidyut K. Goswami Head Coach of Men&#8217;s Tennis <a href=\"https:\/\/gocolumbialions.com\/sports\/mens-tennis\/roster\/coaches\/howard-endelman\/3153\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"3153\" target=\"_blank\">Howard Endelman<\/a>\u00a0had this to say about Zheng.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re so proud of Michael. He exemplifies all the qualities that make college sports great. He&#8217;s just a special individual. He&#8217;s done it on the court and in the classroom here at Columbia, and we could not be more proud of him for this achievement.&#8221;<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n\u200b<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nFOLLOWING THE LIONS<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nStay up to date on all things Columbia Men&#8217;s Tennis by following the Lions on X (@CULionsMTEN), Instagram (@culionsmten) and on Facebook (@ColumbiaAthletics).&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIAN WELLS, Calif. \u2013 Columbia men&#8217;s tennis senior Michael Zheng has been named the Universal Tennis Foundation&#8217;s 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-527492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}