Tennis professional Diego Dedura – rough diamond with resilience

WWhen Mats Merkel, 41, talks about Diego Dedura’s emotions, he doesn’t have to smile a little. He knows what this 18-year-old is like. And what was going on in Munich last year. To put it bluntly, the fuzzy-headed horses got away with it. With joy.

It was the first time Dedura had reached the main draw of an ATP tournament. As a lucky loser, he moved up from the qualification in which he had lost his last match. When the Canadian Denis Shapovalov gave up in the first round with the score at 6:7 (2) and 0:3, Dedura cheered like no one had ever done. He drew a cross in the sand and lay on his back on it. “Many people saw that as negative,” says Merkel from Karlsruhe, who works for the marketing giant IMG and looks after Dedura as an agent: “You shouldn’t forget, he was just 17, he was just happy. About the second round in the main field and about the prize money. That helped him a lot for the season.” One thing is certain for Merkel: “Diego’s heart is absolutely in the right place.”

Now, twelve months later, Dedura is back in the first round of the Munich ATP tournament. While he had previously broken a few age records when he was the first person born in 2008 to play a match on the ATP Tour, he is now just a normal professional who has fought his way through the qualifications. This time the left-hander, who not only admires Rafael Nadal but is also stylistically reminiscent of the Spaniard, won twice there on his own. Of course it wasn’t without a strange appearance. When his qualifying opponent Sumit Nagal had to have his hand treated in his second round match, Dedura stood next to the Indian and watched the procedure closely. As he admits, Merkel thought to himself at that moment: “Diego, what are you doing?”

“The cool thing about Diego is that he has zero ego,” says his agent Merkel

Dedura is not the typical standardized professional. He is very religious, he speaks four languages, his father Cesar comes from Chile and his mother Rosa comes from Lithuania. Both are missing in Munich, but Lamin Lourenzo da Silva assists him as a hitting partner and coach, who, like Dedura, comes from Berlin and plays for Blau-Weiß in the second Bundesliga. Merkel smiles again and says: “And he comes from Berlin, and Berlin is a completely different place than many other German cities. That of course influenced him. If you ask him what his taste in music is, he won’t say: I love Ed Sheeran. He just thinks German rap is cool. And I think that’s okay too.”

That should mean: Dedura doesn’t shy away from duels. Merkel understandably puts it more diplomatically: “You definitely need resilience in tennis.”

Dedura learned after his successful Munich tournament in 2025 that this individual sport can be particularly taxing on the body and soul. The past year was an eventful one with setbacks for the great German talent, who has so far been somewhat overshadowed by Justin Engel (186th), who is higher in the world rankings. Dedura first had to have surgery on his tailbone. Then, on his tour to smaller tournaments at Challenger and ITF level, many early defeats followed. It wasn’t until the end of 2025 that he had a run again and won a small tournament in Agadir. “It was a very instructive year,” says Merkel, “he has resilience.” Merkel assures us: “He comes across as more extroverted than he is.”

On Tuesday afternoon at the BMW Open, Dedura finally lost his first round game against Flavio Cobolli, but he defended himself really well against the world number 16. from Italy, who won the title in Hamburg last year. “It was a great experience today,” said Dedura. The most difficult jump is from youth to adult level: “This is the ATP level.” Despite the defeat, he was “super happy with my performance”. His most important insight remains: “It’s just a constant struggle, you have to keep pushing through.”

Dedura even has a chance of reaching the qualifying rounds of the Grand Slam tournaments

He continues to Madrid, Dedura received a wildcard for the 1000 category tournament, and the Masters category event there is organized by IMG, the agency with which Dedura is also under contract. What happens next? Do the German tournaments help talent? “The cool thing about Diego,” says Merkel, is: “He has zero ego. He doesn’t care whether he gets a wildcard for the qualification or the main field. The main thing is that he can play on German soil. He’s just happy about any support as a young German player.”

The goal is to progress step by step and climb the world rankings; he is currently number 258. “That’s great for someone who was born in 2008,” emphasizes Merkel, who also attaches importance to a different development: “He should improve his play at the same time. We don’t just look at the ranking, because then the ranking comes by itself.” If Dedura achieves a few more wins, he has the chance to slip into the qualifying tournaments for the Grand Slams in Paris, Wimbledon and New York this year. “It is now important to shape Diego,” says Merkel: “He is the Berlin diamond in the rough, so to speak.”