Sports
'How did I get here?' To Princeton from Tibet, one tennis player's remarkable road
PRINCETON, N.J. — His name is Fnu Nidunjianzan. Except it’s not. Because Fnu isn’t technically a name; it’s an acronym. Fnu stands for First Name Unknown, and it’s how Tibetans, who don’t follow traditional first name/surname structure, identify themselves in order to fill out pesky documents, such as U.S. visas.
Nidunjianzan grew up playing tennis in Tibet. Or not exactly. Because there are no tennis courts in Tibet. This is partially because of the altitude. Tennis balls often deflate/explode on impact, which makes playing tennis a little tricky.
Fnu goes by Top. Not because of topspin, though that would be badass. No, it’s because his older sister, Fnu Youjia, fancied a South Korean rapper, Choi Seung-hyun, who went by T.O.P.
Fnu became Top and Top he remains.
Maybe one day his name will become household. Or maybe not. Tennis is a difficult business; only a tiny sample size of its athletes achieve enough to become part of the vernacular. But what Nidunjianzan already has done is extraordinary. In the 50 years since the ATP Tour started its singles ranking system, not a single player from Tibet had earned a single ranking point. Nidunjianzan has 20 of them, and ranks 869th in the world.
Sitting in a media studio built in one of the many subterranean floors of Princeton’s Jadwin Gymnasium, the 19-year-old Nidunjianzan considers his journey, which is only just beginning. “I do wonder sometimes, how did I get here?”
Nidunjianzan’s father, Nimazhaxi, is a former track and field athlete turned coach turned tourism director. He and his wife, Gasheng, believe sports provide a critical outlet for their children which, in this country, doesn’t sound terribly revolutionary. It is outlandish in Tibet. Not until 2022 did a Tibetan-born athlete compete in the Olympics. That stems partially from a long and complicated political history in which Tibet has spent decades seeking independence from China, but also from a mindset that values white-collar jobs over sport.
But Nimazhaxi saw sports as a mechanism to develop his son into a more well-rounded person, allow him to explore the concept of competition that rarely has a place in Tibet, and perhaps spread his wings beyond the country’s fairly closed borders. He didn’t push him to any one sport. Nidunjianzan visited mainland China. He tried pingpong, swimming, badminton, and eventually, very rudimentary tennis. Father and son self-selected – pingpong and badminton are practically prodigy sports in mainland China, and basketball didn’t exactly suit the vertically challenged Nidunkianzian. That left tennis.
Except for the one tiny rub: Tennis didn’t really exist in Tibet. When Nidunjianzan started hitting the ball, people would stop and stare curiously, unsure what exactly he was doing. Nimazhaxi took it upon himself to craft a rudimentary court for his son to play on. He also appointed himself his son’s coach. “He tried to teach me, but he was a track coach,” Nidunjianzan says. “He’d tell me how tennis translates to javelin, like throwing a javelin is just like swinging a tennis racket. Um, not really.” Between that and the balls that regularly went pffffzzzzt upon impact, Nimazhaxi soon realized that tennis and Tibet wouldn’t work.
Top Nidunjianzan is the first player from Tibet to earn a ranking point on the ATP Tour. He has 20 of them, and ranks 869th in the world. (Courtesy of Princeton Athletics)
When most people think of Tibet, they think of Mount Everest, located in the Himalayan sliver between Tibet and Nepal on the country’s western border. Nidunjianzan grew up in the capital city of Lhasa, on the other side of the country, neighboring China. It was there that Nidunjianzan and his mother relocated – to Chengdu, some 1,200 miles from home. Tennis was then and remains still a growing sport in China. Li Na became the first Chinese athlete to win a Grand Slam title when she won the French Open in 2011. But it was lightyears ahead of Tibet, and afforded the 6-year-old Nidunjianzan, who played at the Chengdu City Club, a chance to practice alongside players as old as 17.
By good fortune, Timmy Allin arrived in Chengdu around the same time as Nidunjianzan relocated there. Born and raised in Texas, Allin played tennis at the University of Utah. A three-time All Mountain West scholar-athlete, he was awarded a fifth-year academic scholarship to study Chinese at any university in China. He chose Chengdu and while studying, he also coached tennis on the side. He met Nidunjianzan in 2011 when the family sought out Western coaches to improve his game.
Allin long has been struck by the singularity of focus for children in China. “Your path is pretty much chosen,” he says. “You will go to school sometimes, and play tennis a lot.” That, however, didn’t necessarily create great tennis players, in Allin’s opinion.
The sport requires technique and skill, but also thrives off of creativity and the ability to adjust on the fly. The fundamentals-driven approach in China didn’t allow that side of the game to flourish. “What I’ve found is, the kids who stay in China tend to be more one-dimensional,” Allin says. “They could hit a wall for hours, play on the baseline, but it was almost robotic.”
Allin encouraged Nidunjianzan, who he thought had real talent, to broaden his horizons and invited him to his home in Dallas. “A sort of summer tennis camp,’’ Allin laughs. He helped Nidunjianzan and his mother work through the paperwork of getting a tourist Visa – Nidunjianzan’s mother mistakenly told a U.S. customs officer she intended to stay for three hours when she meant three months – and set them up with a place to stay and introduced them to American food. Subway was a big hit.
Nidunjianzan was wide-eyed at the various ethnicities and cultures in America and that, coupled with the tennis instruction, pushed him and his family to seek out a more permanent U.S. home. They landed on IMG Academy, which, before it became an all-sports behemoth, was founded by Nick Bolletieri as a tennis academy in Bradenton, Fla. Nidunjianzan arrived as an 8-year-old, granted an exception to enroll before the typical admissions age of 10.
Young Top Nidunjianzan meets tennis great Pete Sampras. (Courtesy of Princeton Athletics)
Nidunjianzan and his mother moved into an apartment right next to the courts. In the mornings, he woke to the sound of tennis balls ricocheting around the court, and often a view of a pro – Maria Sharapova, Sebastian Korda, Denis Shapovalov – practicing. For a kid raised in a country without even a court, it felt like some sort of tennis paradise.
Most days, Nidunjianzan practiced two hours with other athletes, and then spent an additional hour with private coaching from Pat Harrison, who ran the pro division. In between he worked with tutors to improve his English and attended classes. Gasheng, his mother, spoke no English. A few times a month, Nidunjianzan’s sister flew to Florida – she was attending college in Boston at the time – to help with grocery shopping and other mundane chores, but much of the day-to-day life navigation was left to Nidunjianzan.
The pair would go months without returning to Tibet, which meant months apart for Nidunjianzan from his father, and Gasheng from her husband. Strangely, the sacrifice contributed to Nidunjianzan’s success as a tennis player. There is no place to hide on a tennis court, no teammate to blame, or coach to offer a bailout. “Some people crack, some stay the same and some have an ability to elevate under pressure,’’ Harrison says. “Top always had an aptitude for handling pressure situations.”
Yet Nidunjianzan also carried that pressure with him. Though his parents never forced him to do anything, there is an implied expectation with cleaving a family in two and moving across the world to pursue tennis. At one point, Nidunjianzan felt it. The wins weren’t coming with the rapidity to which he’d grown accustomed, and he knew he needed a reset. “I had to stop and think. There’s more to life than just tennis, and I can’t put everything into it,” he says.
Opting for one of the nation’s best academic institutions might seem counterintuitive to alleviating pressure. To Nidunjianzan, heading to Princeton made perfect sense. Well, at least once he decided he’d be going to college.
At IMG there are essentially two tracks – turn pro or go to college. For years, Nidunjianzan was on the first track, with plans to become a prodigy teenager on tour. But only the rarefied few really bolt out of their teens and into the tennis stratosphere. Nidunjianzan and his family thought long and hard about the decision. Though he’d been living away from home for years, there was more sacrifice in the singular pursuit of tennis, with no promise of a payoff.
College tennis players can compete in professional tournaments, but also have the luxury of working out the kinks of their game when it’s not yet their full-time job. For Nidunjianzan, that boils down to harnessing the power in his game – crafting a more reliable serve and improving his transition game. “You get the chance to work on your education, fill the holes of your game and take a year or two to gain even more experience,” Harrison says. “The tour can be pretty lonely. It’s year-round, with no real break. That’s incredibly difficult.”
Nidunjianzan admits he needed a little convincing. Like any athlete, achieving the pro ranks is the ultimate goal, and a detour at first felt like a step backward.
That has not been the case. Along with amassing an 18-10 record and earning first-team All-Ivy recognition playing No. 1 singles (and shouldering the inherent pressures that come with that position), Nidunjianzan won his first professional singles title last year. In Huntsville, Ala., the unseeded Nidunjianzan blew past three seeded opponents, including one-time NCAA singles champion Thai-Son Kwiatkowski, to win the title. He then earned a spot in the quarters at a tourney in Germany and rounds of 16 appearances in events in Italy and Spain.
Nidunjianzan missed much of the fall because of a wrist injury – though that afforded him the chance to go home to Tibet for the first time in four years – and hopes this spring to build on what he accomplished a year ago. Top players at the collegiate ranks earn wild cards to the ATP events, and for Nidunjianzan, that would be the perfect transition from where he is, to where he wants to go. “Chinese tennis, I don’t think it’s anywhere near where it could be,” he says. “That’s my dream: to be the player that makes it come along.”
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Courtesy of Princeton)
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As Philip Rivers has shown he could still tear up the NFL at age 44, American Olympic legend Lindsey Vonn has also proven that age is just a number.
Vonn, 41, qualified for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games, Team USA announced on Tuesday. It will be the fifth Winter Olympics that she competes in.
United States’ Lindsey Vonn reacts at the finish area of an alpine ski, women’s World Cup downhill, in Val D’Isere, France, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Pier Marco Tacca)
Vonn had an impressive run at the World Cup in France over the weekend. She was third in super-G, hitting a high speed of 71 mph. It was her second consecutive podium finish after she was third in downhill. It was the 142nd podium finish in her World Cup career.
“I am honored to be able to represent my country one more time, in my 5th and final Olympics!” she wrote in a post on Instagram. “When I made the decision to return to ski racing, I always had one eye on Cortina because it’s a place that is very, very special to me. Although I can’t guarantee any outcomes, I can guarantee that I will give my absolute best every time l kick out of the starting gate. No matter how these games end up, I feel like I’ve already won.
US OLYMPIANS MADISON CHOCK, EVAN BATES SEND MESSAGE TO OPPONENT WHO TOOK THEIR GOLD BEFORE DISQUALIFICATION
United States’ Lindsey Vonn celebrates on the podium after taking third place in an alpine ski, women’s World Cup downhill, in Val D’Isere, France, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Pier Marco Tacca)
“I am grateful for how the season has gone so far, but I am just getting started. See you in Cortina!”
Vonn has already put together an enviable career in skiing.
She won a gold medal in the 2010 Vancouver Games and two bronze medals in Pyeongchang in 2018. She’s also taken home two gold, three silver and two bronze medals in the World Championships.
The Minnesota native also has 83 World Cup wins and several International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) Crystal Globes.
Notably, she’s back competing for gold after being away from the sport for five years.
Austria’s Cornelia Huetter, left, winner of an alpine ski, women’s World Cup downhill, celebrates on the podium with second-placed Germany’s Kira Weidle Winkelmann, left, and third-placed United States’ Lindsey Vonn, in Val D’Isere, France, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Pier Marco Tacca)
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The Winter Olympics will begin on Feb. 6 and run through Feb. 22.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Next summer’s World Cup will be the largest, most complex and most lucrative sporting event in history, with 48 teams playing 104 games in three countries. The tournament is expected to draw a global TV audience of nearly 5 billion and FIFA, the event’s organizer, is hoping for revenues of between $10 billion-$14 billion — which is why lower-bowl tickets for Iran-New Zealand at SoFi Stadium cost nearly $700.
All that seemed unlikely after the first tournament in 1930, when the idea of a soccer World Cup was nearly killed in the cradle, the victim from lack of planning, lack of money and lack of interest. That the competition survived, much less thrived, is nothing short of a miracle, says English writer and podcaster Jonathan Wilson, author of the deeply researched “The Power and Glory: The History of the World Cup.”
“1930, it’s incredibly amateurish in many ways,” Wilson said. “It’s got that sort of almost like a school sports day feel to it.”
Only 13 countries took part in the first tournament; it was supposed to be 16 but the Egyptian team missed its boat to Uruguay while Japan and Siam (now Thailand) couldn’t afford the travel costs and pulled out. England, meanwhile, not only refused to play, but the British press ignored the event, as did much of Europe.
That seemed like a wise decision at the time since the first two matches of the inaugural tournament were affected by snow, with one of the opening games drawing just 4,444 fans. The smallest crowd in World Cup history, estimated at about 300, showed up for another first-round game between Romania and Peru and the TV audience … well, there was none since TV had yet to be invented.
The officiating was beyond suspect — Romania’s manager, Constantin Radulescu, also worked two games as a linesman — and the U.S. trainer, Jack Coll, had to be stretchered off the field during his team’s semifinal — yes, the U.S. made the semifinals! — with Argentina when he lost consciousness after inhaling the fumes from a bottle of chloroform that shattered in his pocket.
In another game, the penalty spots were mistakenly marked 16 yards from goal instead of the regulation 12 — and nobody noticed.
“Some of the details don’t make sense,” Wilson said. “The whole thing is so sort of low grade compared to today.”
When Argentine captain Nolo Ferreira left the tournament and returned home to take his law exams his replacement, Guillermo Stábile, scored a tournament-high eight goals in four games — then never played for the national team again (although he did coach it, leading the La Albiceleste to six South American titles and the 1958 World Cup).
Given the farcical nature of the 1930 World Cup, the tournament probably should have ended right there. Instead, 1930 has become the foundation on which next year’s competition was built.
The origins of the tournament, however, actually make sense. Before 1930, FIFA recognized the winner of the Olympic competition as the world champion. But that event was for amateurs, a point on which the International Olympic Committee would not budge.
With professional soccer growing in popularity, FIFA decided to stage its own breakaway event and play it in Uruguay, the country that had won the last two Olympic titles.
Argentina’s goalkeeper can’t stop a shot by Uruguay during the 1930 World Cup final against Argentina in Montevideo, Uruguay.
(Associated Press)
That quickly proved to be a big mistake. The growing effects of the Great Depression left many countries unable to afford the long, slow steamship trip to South America. The first tournament was open to any country that wanted to play, yet two months before the first game no European teams had agreed to come.
“It was taken very seriously by Uruguay and Argentina,” Wilson said, but not by many others.
That changed shortly after Romania’s King Carol II, who ascended to the throne in a coup that deposed his son, personally selected his country’s World Cup roster and sent it on its way. France quickly agreed to go too, entering a makeshift team under pressure from FIFA president Jules Rimet, a Frenchman. Belgium also buckled under FIFA pressure and all three teams boarded the same ship for the trip to Uruguay, working out together on the 15-day voyage aboard the SS Conte Verde, an Italian ocean liner.
“Even the four European nations who go it’s not entirely clear how seriously they took it,” Wilson said. “The French and Romanians, they kept diaries. They seem to have regarded this as a laugh. We’ll try to win but it doesn’t really matter.”
Things didn’t really get loony until the tournament began. The Bolivian team, for example, played in berets, as did an Argentine midfielder, while the 15 referees who worked the games, some of whom had traveled and socialized with the players on the long boat ride from Europe, dressed formally in knickers, long-sleeve shirts, blazers and ties.
The well-dressed officials spent much of the tournament working with police to break up fights; play was so violent at least two players sustained broken legs and the U.S.-Argentina semifinal descended into a full-out brawl, with one American having four teeth knocked out and another hospitalized with injuries to his stomach.
The tournament finally finished with the hosts beating Argentina 4-2, after which the Argentines broke off diplomatic relations with their neighbor and an angry mob in Buenos Aires stoned the Uruguayan embassy.
Uraguay’s team before the 1930 World Cup final against Argentina.
(Keystone / Getty Images)
Argentina’s soccer team before preparing for the 1930 World Cup final.
(Associated Press)
“It ended,” Wilson said of the tournament, “with everybody sort of fighting each other.”
Few disagreed with the Argentine magazine El Gráfico, which seemed to predict there was little future for the fledgling event. “The World Cup is over,” it wrote. “The development of this competition brought not only an unpleasant atmosphere, but also an ungrateful one.”
Yet nearly a century later, the World Cup is still here. And that, too, was foretold in 1930 in the story of Romanian midfielder Alfred Eisenbeisser (who was also known as Fredi Fieraru because, why not?).
On the journey home from the first World Cup, Eisenbeisser contracted pneumonia and a priest was called to administer the last rites. The ship eventually docked in Genoa and he was taken to a sanatorium while the rest of the team continued on to Romania.
Assuming her son had perished in Italy, Eisenbeisser’s mother arranged a wake — only to have her son stroll into the ceremony very much alive, causing the woman to faint. Eisenbeisser would play 12 more years of professional soccer and compete in figure skating in the 1936 Winter Olympics, where he finished 13th in the pairs competition.
Turns out the reports of Eisenbeisser’s demise, like those of the World Cup, were greatly exaggerated.
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
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Philip Rivers’ return to the NFL has many former quarterbacks over the age of 40 wondering if they could turn back the clock and perform at a similarly high level.
If anything, they should at least take note of what Rivers did in the first half for the Indianapolis Colts against the San Francisco 49ers.
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Philip Rivers (17) passes as San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman Keion White (56) applies pressure during the first half of an NFL football game, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026 semifinalist put on a vintage performance in the first half against the 49ers, delighting NFL fans who tuned into the game on Monday night.
He started the night coming out to cheers from Colts fans at Lucas Oil Stadium – his family also in attendance. The Colts went nine plays, 72 yards and Rivers found wide receiver Alec Pierce for a 20-yard touchdown. Indianapolis jumped out to a 7-0 lead.
NFL SUSPENDS STEELERS’ DK METCALF FOR 2 GAMES AFTER ALTERCATION WITH LIONS FAN
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Philip Rivers (17) passes against the San Francisco 49ers during the first half of an NFL football game, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/AJ Mast)
San Francisco scored on back-to-back drives thanks to Brock Purdy hooking up with Demarcus Robinson, the special teams forcing a turnover, and then Purdy throwing a touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey. When Rivers got the ball back, he drove down the field again.
The Colts scored on a 16-yard touchdown pass from Rivers to Pierce to end a 12-play, 66-yard drive. The game was tied with a lot of time to go in the first half.
Indianapolis trailed 24-17 at the half. But the attention was on Rivers.
He was 14-of-21 with 175 passing yards and two touchdown passes. The last time he threw multiple touchdown passes in the regular season was on Dec. 20, 2020, against the Houston Texans.
Rivers came back to the Colts last week at the age of 44. He had a solid performance against the Seattle Seahawks for someone who hadn’t thrown a ball in nearly five years.
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Now, the Colts’ playoff hopes rest on his shoulders.
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