Alumni Spotlight: Neel Grover

Neel Grover ’92 will receive the Outstanding Alumni Athlete award at tonight’s 52nd UCI Lauds & Laurels Ceremony. Awarded annually, the honor recognizes a former student-athlete who has achieved great professional prominence in their industry or sport and is engaged in the community, helping to further the goals of UCI. 

From his family connections to his time as a student-athlete, and now his continued support of both UC Irvine and the men’s tennis program, Neel Grover is the definition of an Anteater for life.

Grover got into tennis because his father and brother played while he was growing up, but his first love was baseball. He wanted to pursue baseball going into high school before his brother convinced him otherwise.

“My brother pushed me more into tennis,” Grover said. “The best advice he ever gave me was you need 17 other people to play baseball, you only need one other to play tennis.”

Grover listened to his brother and really started to see his tennis game develop in high school, achieving his first junior ranking when he was 15 years old. Although he was a little late to enter the rankings compared to other up-and-coming tennis players, that helped fuel him throughout his high school career. As a junior at Dana Hills High School, Grover and his doubles partner won the CIF-Southern Section title. Coincidentally, that was the same year Palos Verdes High protégé and eventual world No. 1, Pete Sampras, was the CIF singles champion.

While Sampras went straight from high school to the pros, Grover was keeping his options open to continue his career at the collegiate level. UC Irvine was always on the radar for Grover with his father working as a physician at the UCI Medical Center and his older sister graduating from the prestigious university. He was also interested in UCLA, but in the end, it was the Anteaters’ head coach, Greg Patton, who tipped the scales. 

“I wanted to go to the best school I could play tennis at that was preferably in California,” Grover said. “I initially wanted to go to UCLA but then I got to spend some time with Greg Patton. He could convince you of anything. The team was already great, but he helped sell the school, the program and the area, which really made me want to be part of his team.”

When Grover arrived on campus, the Anteaters had established themselves as one of the top-10 teams in the country. With nearly the entire squad returning, Grover would redshirt his first year, when UCI achieved the highest ranking in program history at No. 3. That season, Grover supported his teammates while continuing to train and work hard to improve his own game. The following year, he made his way into the lineup for his first match and remembers it vividly.

“I didn’t know I was going to play that day against UC Santa Barbara; somebody had gotten hurt last minute so Coach Patton told me I was playing at No. 6,” Grover recalled. “I was nervous. The players next to me on courts two and four were losing at the time and I had no idea what the other three courts were doing. I was losing badly, down 5-0 when Coach Patton came on the court and told me you know we’re losing on every other court and I put you in here because you’re supposed to be the future captain of this team. He said everyone was counting on me and I needed to win this match. I came back and won in straight sets. What I found out later was the other three guys were winning easily. You can only do that once, but Coach Patton knew what would get me going. He was just an amazing leader.”

Under the leadership of Patton, Grover - who was a two-time captain - and his teammates won four-straight Big West championships and made three NCAA Tournaments, which at the time was only a 16-team field. Winning was important to Grover, but the experience and friendships he developed are what he loved most about his time as a UC Irvine men’s tennis student-athlete.

“I learned so much from my teammates and we had such a great team atmosphere,” Grover said. “I think that’s what made college tennis so special to me and such a big part of my life. It’s why I still play competitively now, because I enjoyed the time with my teammates so much. It is such a special part of my life.”

Since college, Grover has won 22 national championships, including 16 with former UCI teammate Art Hernandez. This year, Grover put together his best post-collegiate season, winning four titles, including last week at the National Clay Court championships in Florida. He also traveled to Turkey to play for the United States' four-person National Team back in March.

Grover has seen just as much, if not more, success off the courts. He graduated from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in economics and went on to earn his law degree from the University of San Diego. He was a corporate securities lawyer for three-and-a-half years, but for Grover, he always saw law as his pathway to business. 

Grover made the transition to the business world when he left his law firm to run an incubator called ThinkTank. He then became the President and CEO of Buy.com, which at the time, was losing $100 million a year, but he helped turn it into the third largest e-commerce company behind Amazon and eBay. When it was sold to Rakuten, he stayed on to run Rakuten North America. Grover then left to join his former private equity investors as an operating partner for Clearlake Capital. He helped them buy and run companies for about three years before founding Indi, a video and commerce startup. He ended up selling part of that company, which is now a joint venture between Simon Property Group and Rue Guilt Groupe. Currently, Grover runs Shop Premium Outlets, which is a Simon digital marketplace.

Grover credits a lot of his business success to his experience as a student-athlete at UC Irvine. One of the biggest things Grover learned from his mentor, Coach Patton, was how to run and manage different people. Being able to juggle the rigors of academics and athletics also prepared him for a career in business.

“We practiced or had matches for 6-7 hours a day,” Grover said. “Back then you played a full two out of three sets in doubles and singles. We had practice in the morning and again in the afternoon, and to do all of that with school, and try to have any kind of life, is very difficult to juggle. Anyone who can handle that is definitely someone who I think can be successful in anything they do. It’s why I love hiring student-athletes.”

Hiring student-athletes is just one of the ways Grover gives back to the campus and community. He’s also served on numerous advisory boards at UC Irvine and has been on the Chancellor’s CEO Roundtable for 15 years. He was even asked by former UCI Dean Gregory Washington, who is now the president at George Mason, to give the commencement speech for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering a few years ago.

“I’m not an engineer so I remember asking Dean Washington why he wanted me to give the commencement speech, and he said that it was because I had hired a lot of engineers, but more importantly, that I took a lot of chances,” Grover recalled. “He wanted the students to realize it’s okay to take risks. You don’t have to take the safe path. So, giving that commencement speech was one of the highlights of my career.”

Grover’s wife, Sharlene, an Anteater by marriage, is also involved on campus as a member of the Dean of Social Sciences Women of Leadership board. In addition to all their involvement on campus, Grover remains a big supporter of UC Irvine men’s tennis and is proud of what current head coach Mike Saunders, who was his roommate when he was a sophomore at UCI, has done with the program recently.

“What I love about Mike is he doesn’t just want to win, he wants to find good people,” Grover said. “First thing he asks is how the player is as a student and how he is as a person, which was so important to Coach Patton too. He could help mold great players, but you have to start with a great person and that’s really what Mike does as well. It’s great to see the program have success again.”

Grover was part of multiple Big West titles and NCAA appearances as a player and now with his support, he has continued to play a role in the program’s success, which includes a conference tournament and regular-season championship over the last two seasons.