Gregory Hirshman isn’t an ordinary college athlete. He’s been a starter for four years on Stanford University’s NCAA Top 10 tennis team, and this year he held down the No. 5 singles spot. But he’s also won NCAA honors for earning a 4.0 in his double major of mathematics and economics, and he’s started a student newspaper to explore contentious issues like gay marriage and gun control from both the left and the right.
How does he do it all and still occasionally kick back like a typical college student? It’s all about time management, he says. And getting at least eight hours of sleep per night. Mr. Hirshman, who is 22 years old, says the key to his success is mapping out when he has to “peak” athletically and academically—and then focusing on each one at the appropriate time. He is also never without a book and his computer. “If I have five minutes when I’m sitting before class starts, I don’t want to be sitting there staring at the ceiling,” he says. “I’ll be shooting off a few e-mails to plan things out for later, I’ll be reading an extra few pages, I’ll maybe knock out an extra problem in my problem set.”
Mr. Hirshman, who was featured in the 2007 documentary Unstrung, about top junior tennis players, was ranked as high as No. 10 nationally during his high-school tennis career. At Stanford he is hailed for his tough mental game, which he says is the biggest reason he wins. “A tennis match is not about how well you play absolutely, it’s how well you play relatively,” he says. “You can play terribly, but play in such a style that makes your opponent play worse, and you win.” Figuring out his opponent’s style, and then foiling it, makes tennis “psychological warfare,” he says.
Mental toughness is something Mr. Hirshman says he learned from his mother, who suffered from a traumatic brain injury nearly 35 years ago, when she fell while riding her bicycle on the Stanford campus. She was in a coma for two months. But she recovered and went on to have three boys. Mr. Hirshman, who still calls home everyday to talk with his parents, is the youngest. A common saying around his house when he and his brothers were growing up was, “Fight like Mom.”
“My mom played tennis for Cal back in the day, and now she limps around as she walks, and she stumbles and falls, yet she’s the happiest person out there,” he says. “That puts a lot of the pain and the difficult times I’ve gone through into perspective.”
His Cardinal teammates lost a nail-biter to top-seeded University of Virginia on Saturday. Mr. Hirshman didn’t play, because of a back injury that took him out of the last few games of the season. But the San Diego native has some bright times ahead. He will be captain of the U.S. tennis team this summer at the World University Games, in China. Then he plans to attend the London School of Economics and Political Science, with the eventual goal of a career in financial consulting.
He’s lived in California all his life, and it’s time to move on, he believes. “There are only 30 students in this finance-and-private-equity program, and in addition there are 20 countries represented out of the 30 students, so it’s incredibly international,” he says. “It’s not just about meeting people from different parts of the political spectrum, it’s about meeting people from different parts of the globe.”