Whether it’s the serious tournament competitor, the leisurely weekend player, or simply the avid fan of the professional game, tennis remains one of the most popular sports around the globe. Fittingly, American college tennis features a distinctly international flavor, with 61.0 percent of first-year Division I players entering the college ranks in 2019 coming from outside the United States, according to NCAA Research. That figure is up from 51.8 percent just five years earlier.
The makeup of the Bucknell men’s tennis team mirrors that trend. Of the nine Bison on the spring 2023 roster, six hailed from outside the U.S. borders, including two from Germany and one each from China, Sweden, England, and Canada.
Stuttgart, Germany native Amar Tahirovic recently completed an outstanding freshman season for the Bison, making an immediate impact on one of the Patriot League’s top teams. He led the squad with 23 singles wins against only nine losses, including a 14-6 record in dual matches and an 8-2 mark in the No. 1 spot in the lineup. At season’s end, he earned First Team All-Patriot League honors, becoming the first Bison rookie to claim an all-league certificate since standout Nick Bybel in 2013.
Amar, who is fluent in three languages and plans to major in business analytics in Bucknell’s Freeman College of Management, recalls that the transition to moving overseas away from his family to play American college tennis was certainly challenging, but a tight-knit group of teammates, several of whom had also made the same leap, played a big role in his early success.
“It was definitely a big change,” Amar admits. “Lewisburg is a small town, and everything back home in Germany was so much more spread out. On top of that, going away to college was my first time living alone without my parents. The culture here is different, and I had so many new people to meet. But being on the tennis team was so helpful. My teammates were my first friends here, and to have another German [Oscar Bain Moreno de Vega] freshman on the team was really helpful. We could help each other through the process and learn together.”
Amar is the younger of the two sons of Ismet and Hava Tahirovic, native Bosnians who moved to the United States to work as civilians for the U.S. Army. That work took them to Germany, where there are a number of American military bases.
Older brother Ajdin, eight years Amar’s elder, played tennis at Division II power Barry University in Florida and was part of an NCAA championship team in 2014-15. Amar was actually born in Burlington, Vermont but moved with his family to Germany at a young age. He attended grade school and then Stuttgart High School, while learning to speak German in addition to his parents’ native Bosnian and English.
Influenced by Ajdin’s ascent in junior tennis, Amar recalls picking up a racket for the first time around the age of four and playing in his first tournaments at the age of eight. He didn’t have far to look for a coach, as his father Ismet had taken up the sport and become a tennis instructor after playing semi-pro soccer in his younger days.
“My father really worked hard to understand the game of tennis. He watched a lot of matches and went on YouTube to watch videos of other instructors and what they are teaching. There are so many informational videos out there, and like watching my brother and seeing other coaches and how they train their players, he just learned a lot.”
There is still a photo in the family living room of Amar winning that first tournament at eight years old, and from there he started playing in junior tournaments not only in Germany but across all of Europe and even some in the U.S.
Many high-level junior tennis players drop out of traditional schools and either attend sports academies with an academic component or hire instructors for home schooling, but Amar traveled a more traditional route.
“The crazy part is that I actually went to a normal school during the day, and then since my dad was the coach we could train in the evening. I would go to school from like 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, come home and eat, and then go do training with my dad until about 7 p.m., and then find time for homework. That was pretty much my life throughout middle school and high school. I had to take a lot of absences to travel for tournaments, but I managed to make up the work.”
Like many young players who have tasted success, Amar admits that he initially harbored dreams of turning professional, but as he got older and understood the depth of talent in international tennis, he shifted his focus to playing college tennis in the U.S.
“As a junior you always say you want to turn pro, but then when you grow up a bit you realize some things are much tougher than you think. So around my sophomore or junior year I decided to start looking for colleges because it was a great opportunity to continue my education and play tennis at the same time. And then possibly after college I can still try to play some pro tournaments.”
Even though he had a very good University Tennis Rating (UTR) of 11.72 and was listed as high as 21st in the German U18 rankings, there were two major challenges to Amar’s college pursuits. First was simply being seen by enough coaches, most of whom do not have recruiting budgets that afford the opportunity to make frequent trips overseas; and second, the global pandemic that closed travel and shuttered many tournaments. Fortunately, Amar was able to take advantage of the modern technology that has shrunk the size of the world: the internet.
Amar made his first recruiting video during his junior year with the intent of sending it directly to college coaches. He also decided to post it to YouTube to see if it generated any interest, and sure enough, within two hours of the video going live Amar received an email from former Bucknell coach Bruce Myers, who had become very active in international recruiting.
Amar listened intently to the Myers’ sales pitch, researched Bucknell more on his own, and was quickly sold.
“The academics were definitely a big part of why I chose Bucknell. I saw that it was really hard to get accepted, and the academic reputation was very good. I also liked the size of the school. I didn’t really want to go somewhere with a lot of students and get overwhelmed while trying to adapt to living on my own for the first time.”
In addition to the additional culture shock, which subsided thanks to the support of his teammates and new head coach Jason Cohen, who succeeded Myers just prior to the 2022 fall season, Amar also had to make a significant tennis-related adjustment to a different court surface. In Europe, tennis is primarily played on red clay, similar to what you would see at the French Open. But American college tennis is typically played on hard courts, a much faster surface.
“It took me a good month or two to adapt to the hard courts because everything goes much faster. The balls don’t get stopped into the court like on red clay, where you can have some crazy bounces.”
College tennis is a two-semester sport. In the fall, teams will typically participate in weekend-long flighted tournaments where players can build up lots of matches. The spring season is all about the team, with dual matches leading into conference tournaments and the NCAA Championships.
That worked out well for Amar, who had a full fall season to adjust to a new country, a new school, a new team, and the faster surfaces. Although if you simply look at his record, it might not indicate much of a struggle at all. Amar posted a team-best 9-3 record in the fall tournaments. He made it to the A Singles flight championship before falling in three sets in his very first event, the Bucknell Invitational. A week later he went 3-0 at the Villanova Invitational, and in October he earned a bye into the Silver Draw at the competitive ITA Atlantic Regional in Charlottesville, Va., where he split two singles matches.
Playing exclusively in the top two spots in the singles lineup in the spring, Amar picked right up where he left off and won 14 of his 20 matches, including a 5-1 record against Patriot League opponents. He was also a key doubles player, where he went 13-7 in spring duals in the No. 2 position, paired alongside countryman and fellow newcomer Oscar Bain.
“It was definitely stressful at times because there are always exams and schoolwork during the week and then two to three hours of practice each day. But the team ended up being great. We had a few problems at the beginning of the fall semester, but we got it all sorted out and the team chemistry ended up being really good. With so many younger players and a new coach, it takes some time to find the right doubles partners and see where everyone is going to fit into the lineup. But we ended up doing really well in the spring and were just a few points away from going to the championship match in the conference tournament.”
Indeed, the Bison ended up 15-8 in the spring, their most wins since 2013. The squad piled up 12 straight victories in one stretch, which was the fifth-longest streak in team history and the longest since 1998. Seeded fifth in the Patriot League Tournament, Bucknell upset fourth-seeded Lehigh 4-2 in the quarterfinals and then had No. 1 Navy on the ropes in the semis before the Midshipmen pulled out a third-set tiebreaker on the last match on the court to escape with a 4-3 verdict.
“It was honestly a sad finish to the season, but that happens in sport, that’s why we play. We are going to go into next season with a lot of confidence. We return a lot of players, and I hear the new guys coming in are also very good.”
In the meantime, Amar is back in Germany playing a full summer schedule. He was only home from Lewisburg for about a week when he crammed in some quick training back on the clay courts and promptly won his first event back on home soil. He has a number of tournaments on the schedule and will also be playing team tennis in the fourth division of the competitive German club league.
Amar will get a ton of competition against top men’s players from across Germany, and then he plans to decompress with a family vacation in August before returning to Bucknell for his sophomore year. Improving on a 23-9 season will not be easy, but if he can continue his acclimation to American college tennis, it will certainly be a journey worth watching.
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