Djokovic’s influence on me was huge: Dzumhur

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Damir Dzumhur was born with a bang, literally. The hospital he was born was blown up during the Bosnia war a day after Dzumhur set foot on earth. 

After being evacuated to safety, Dzumhur went on to be a star, in both tennis world as well as in the reel world. The 24-year-old acted in a couple of movies and had to give up on acting to pursue his tennis career and became Bosnia’s Numero Uno tennis player.

In a chat with DTNext, Dzumhur opened up on his acting career and his interactions with Novak Djokovic. 

There was an audition at our school. I went for it because I liked it. I was young and I didn’t have so many matches to play.  They chose me for one movie after which I got another.  It was fun, performing in front of the cameras was not a big deal for me. I got two more offers after that but since I was already playing serious tennis, I had to opt out of movies.

For me it is playing tennis. I think I had to work more in tennis, films are something that comes naturally to me but tennis you must work really hard to be a good player.

It was easier with Djokovic as he’s from Balkan, a country where people are always close. Federer was my idol, I was dreaming about meeting him and I got a chance to play with him twice and practise many times. It was a great experience to be with them, to share the locker room with them. Djokovic has helped me a lot. He has so many things to say about tennis and he is the one who is pushing us from Balkan and I really appreciate that. I don’t think I have many things similar to Djokovic, but our mentalities are similar since we are coming from Serbia and Bosnia and it helps a lot.

He always is close to us. He is the one who encouraged and pushed Troicki, Tipsarevic etc. I’m sure they’d be never there without him. When Djokovic became number one, it inspired all of us. Many of us realised they we good players, some of them they were even beating Djokovic when they were younger. They saw that it is possible to become good players. He was always motivating and it doesn’t matter where you coming from, if you work hard you can achieve is what he is trying to tell us.