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)
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
COMPLETE PRO WRESTLING COVERAGE ON FOX NEWS DIGITAL
Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Sports
Commentary: ‘I don’t want any handouts.’ Amid the Angels’ drought, a starry homecoming for Mike Trout
Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.
Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.
Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.
That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.
Not even at home?
“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”
Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.
“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.
“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”
His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.
In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.
“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.
“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”
For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.
Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.
“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”
Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.
“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.
“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”
Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.
“It’s like win or die.”
It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.
No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)
Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.
“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”
Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.
He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.
Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.
“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.
“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”
At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.
“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.
“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”
So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, OUSMANE DEMBÉLÉ FIRE FRANCE INTO WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS WITH WIN OVER MOROCCO
It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
-
Nebraska3 minutes agoNebraska abortions rose nearly 8% in 2025, mostly due to influx of Iowa patients
-
Nevada6 minutes agoMurder suspect from Montana takes own life when surrounded by police in Nevada
-
New Hampshire11 minutes ago2 transgender girls drop NH lawsuit after Supreme Court ruling, personal hardships
-
New Jersey18 minutes agoNJ Legislators Are Considering a Bill That Could Ban Tesla Robotaxis Due to Their Tech Choice
-
New Mexico21 minutes agoNew gay bar opens in Nob Hill
-
North Carolina26 minutes ago
Explore on the water: How, where to kayak in Raleigh
-
North Dakota33 minutes agoSchulz to transition from ND Parks and Recreation to ND Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
-
Ohio36 minutes agoMarion lecture to focus on expanding youth learning programs
