Michael Zheng walked through hell to play at Flushing Meadows.
He was too young to drive, too far away to be driven, too ambitious to pass up the opportunity after being selected to train at the Billie Jean King USTA National Tennis Center, the site of the U.S. Open.
Three times a week, Zheng’s mother picked him up from school in northern New Jersey, then dropped him at a nearby bus stop to catch a ride to Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. The 10-year-old stepped into the crowded, dreary, dingy, putrid, soul-sucking station on Eighth Avenue that one only enters as a means of escape, followed by a near-full-length ride on the 7 train.
But after a one-way journey of roughly two hours and 40 miles, the kid stood in the shadow of Louis Armstrong Stadium.
