Tennis has been the lifelong driving force for American pro player Niki Uberoi, who was basically born with a racket in her hand. Her interest in the environment and climate action has been an abiding, consistent, and growing passion. Her commitment, on the court and off, is why EcoAthletes heartily welcomes her as its newest Champion.

Saying that tennis has been the thing for Uberoi — and for her four tennis-playing sisters — is an understatement.

“My family moved from Princeton, New Jersey to Boca Raton, Florida when I was six to pursue tennis,” she shared. “My first coach was Rick Macci, who worked with my older sisters at the time and is notable for having coached Serena and Venus Williams. He also ended up coaching my sister Shikha when she played Venus Williams at the 2004 US Open. As a little kid, I remember I would go to school, go straight to train at the tennis academy for hours, workout, and then come home and finish all my schoolwork. We were a total tennis family.”

And a talented tennis family, to be sure.

Niki’s sisters, Shikha and Neha, got to top 100 and 200 on the WTA tour, respectively. Sisters Diya, and Niki’s twin Nimi, also played for their college tennis teams.

Niki was all-in as well. This meant being home schooled by the 7th grade, having six hours of training a day, and competing every weekend around the country for junior tennis tournaments. She was successful on the court and in the classroom and ended up being recruited to play tennis at Brown University with Nimi. Niki played singles and doubles for all four years, earning athlete of the week her first month of college and eventually becoming the captain of the team.

“I loved playing for Brown and being a part of a team,” related Uberoi. “Balancing the academic rigor with the athletic demand was hard work, but very fulfilling. After some deliberation my senior year on what post-college life would look like for me, I knew I had more tennis in me. After graduation, I decided to pursue tennis professionally and started training to compete on the pro circuit. I was fortunate to have a team that backed me, and I was determined and dedicated.”

Uberoi moved back to her old stomping grounds in Boca Raton and worked to get her game up to as high a level as possible. In the years that followed, she traveled and competed in tennis tournaments all over the world. She was able to handle the physical aspects, but the mental parts proved to be a challenge.

“I felt a lot of pressure and found myself getting very nervous in matches, which had not been a problem before,” she acknowledged. “Being a pro athlete was a very unique thing in the Indian community where the emphasis is firmly on a stable career and education. By the time I graduated, all four of my siblings had retired so the torch had been passed onto me so to speak. I felt like I had two sets of expectations — my family’s and my own. It took me some time to finally define tennis as mine. Once I was able to do that, I started to play better.”

In 2019, Uberoi achieved a career high WTA singles ranking of #819 and continued her global tennis odyssey as she began training in Guangzhou, China with noted coach, Alan Ma. She traveled all over China, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Turkey for tournaments. And then, the COVID pandemic hit.

“I was in Japan playing the week before all tournaments were canceled in the spring of 2020,” she recalled. “Already being in Asia, I made the decision to go back to China to train until the tour opened up again. Things were already better there, and I figured I could take advantage of the opportunity to train while back home everyone was under lockdown. What started off as a one-month training block became a nearly year-long pre-season waiting for the tour to resume. During my time in China, I also studied Mandarin and taught myself how to cook.”

Uberoi was building her game up, working towards reaching her goal of making the top 100, when her progress stalled because of a debilitating wrist injury and a foot stress fracture in March 2021: “Rehab turned out to be a long and arduous process, having to take a couple of months off and undergo procedures for my wrists.”

As 2022 dawned, Uberoi tried to make the most of her time off court. She began leading the Athlete Committee at Athletes Soul — a nonprofit started by Olympic synchronized swimmer and EcoAthletes Champion Myriam Glez — which takes a holistic approach to supporting athletes as they transition away from sports. She also took the rehab time to work on her fitness and develop other aspects of her game.

Last spring, she upped her training regimen as she finally became pain free. Next came playing local tournaments in the fall of last year. Now, with a fresh perspective and healthier than she had been in years, Uberoi’s play improved as did her confidence. Fast forward to this month and Uberoi is finally back playing professional tournaments — and thinking BIG! The tourneys she is playing in Tunisia would qualify her for tour ranking points on what is becoming her next push to get to the world’s Top 100.

Uberoi also thinks big when it comes to climate action goals.

Her interest in the environment and climate began when she saw Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth.” It reached another level when she took an AP Environmental Science class in high school.

“That class, a mix of science, social science and policy, really cemented my desire to pursue a degree in Environmental Science,” asserted Uberoi. “I always knew I wanted to use my platform to champion the environment, and have it play a big part in my post-tennis career. So, the fact that Brown had a strong environmental science department was an important factor in my decision.”

While there, Uberoi was exposed to and became passionate about the intersection of climate change and agriculture.

“I was able to work on an organic farm one summer and began to feel that sustainable farming was one of the most pressing challenges of our time,” she reflected. “It was truly mind-opening. So, too was learning about ‘Big Ag’ and the massive environmental and climate problems it causes. So, I made food security and plant sciences the focus of my environmental science major. I did my capstone project on the effects of climate change on plant productivity, conducting a yearlong research project on the effect of increasing temperatures on tomato plant reproduction.”

For Uberoi, it’s tennis in the here and now and then the environment (“I’d love to work in climate solutions or urban agriculture”) in her not-too-distant post-tennis career.

In the meantime, she is excited to join the EcoAthletes Champions network.

“I’ve been looking for something like EcoAthletes for years,” Uberoi gushed. “Climate change is no longer tomorrow’s problem. Global warming is having a very real and noticeable impact on athletes, such as us tennis players, and our ability to cope physically and compete under rising temperatures. The tennis ecosystem has a significant environmental footprint, from tournament infrastructure to travel to equipment. There are things we can be doing better, more sustainably— I’d love to be part of a circular solution to those problems. We have so much to do! I’m thrilled that EcoAthletes exists to help me, and other athletes use our platforms to do this work.”

You can follow Niki on Instagram