Damir Džumhur: An Individual's Victory Against the System

Damir Džumhur won the ATP tournament in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg on Sunday. It was also his first ATP tournament title of his career.

With his victory at the ATP tournament, Džumhur achieved his career-best ranking of 40th place on the world tennis list. The serious sporting world will no longer wonder who Damir Džumhur is.

After this great result, as usual, there was a rush to be the first to congratulate Džumhur on his major success.

Many immediately began to emphasize how they recognized Džumhur's talent ten years ago and predicted a brilliant future for him, full of tournament wins.

Those who are trying to take credit for Džumhur's achievements today are mostly the same ones who, just a year ago, said that Džumhur was overrated, mentally unstable, that he had no potential to achieve any serious results in his career, and that he would be condemned to play smaller tournaments with players ranked below 300th place for his entire life.

However, Džumhur, through his own hard work and sacrifice, with the selfless support of his family and his father, who was his coach for many years, managed to reach the ranks of the world's top tennis players and achieve success for a tennis player from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Some will say it is the greatest success of BiH tennis. There is no truth in such a statement, because Damir Džumhur's success is solely his merit and that of his coaching team. There is no success of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in this.

Excluding fan support, Džumhur has never had serious support from the state since the beginning of his career until today. This is not just the case with Džumhur, but also with other tennis players and athletes in general, especially those who compete in individual sports. Let's recall the difficulties in organizing the Davis Cup when money was collected at the last moment so that we would not have to withdraw from organizing the match with the Netherlands.

Some time ago, our best swimmer, Amina Kajtaz, left her hometown of Mostar and moved to Zagreb due to the lack of an adequate pool for professional swimming.

Due to the lack of conditions for treatment, Džumhur also moved to Belgrade.

Damir is not the first or the last athlete who, due to the stepmotherly attitude of the state towards its athletes, its best ambassadors in the world, has left the country. That is why Damir Džumhur's title is his alone, not an ATP title for the state.

Damir Džumhur is, jokingly speaking, in a way a statistical error. An individual who has defeated the system.