The Indian-origin tennis champion graduates from Stanford University.
Stanford University celebrated Indian-origin tennis player Sameer Banerjee as he graduated this month with a degree in science, technology and society. For his latest project at Stats 100: Mathematics of Sports, Samir built an algorithm to analyze years of tennis server data across different surfaces to determine the most successful players.
“I dug a lot into the serve stats,” said Banerjee, an ITA All-American who helped lead the Stanford men’s tennis team to the ACC Championship in 2025. “I realized that if I was hitting more than 60 percent of the first serves in each match, I would put myself in a very good position to win.”“He came to Stanford with the goal of becoming a professional tennis player, as well as taking advantage of everything the campus has to offer academically and socially.
“He built his major around computer science, statistics, management science, engineering, and humanities courses that pushed him to think more broadly, and he made some of his best friends through the Kappa Alpha fraternity,” the university said.Playing for a team after years of individual competition also pushed him in ways he didn’t expect. “There is a mindset shift that needs to happen, where you need to put the team goal over your personal goals,” he said. “That’s where a lot of the growth has happened for me. You’re not just playing for yourself, you’re playing for everyone who cares about the program.”“Being a student-athlete at Stanford is a special experience. It’s a close-knit community, and everyone is so supportive. It’s really shaped me as a person, and I’m lucky to be able to be a part of it,” Banerjee said.
Who is Sameer Banerjee?
Sameer Banerjee is an American tennis player with an ATP singles ranking of No. 347 achieved on November 3, 2025 and an ATP doubles ranking of No. 800 achieved on September 8, 2025. He won the 2021 Wimbledon junior title and reached the quarterfinals at the 2021 US Open. Banerjee holds a combined ITF junior ranking of no. 2, and was achieved on July 12, 2021.Banerjee was born in New Jersey and began playing tennis with his father at the age of six. By the age of 12, he chose it over the other sports he had played growing up. He went on to win the Wimbledon Junior Championships, reach No. 2 in the World Junior Rankings, and complete high school online to accommodate travel to international tournaments. “I was living in a bubble where I mostly interacted with coaches and other players,” he said. “I really enjoyed it, but there was an opportunity cost — I didn’t have prom, and I wasn’t able to spend time with my friends my senior year,” Banerjee said of growing up as an athlete.
