ATP Tour

Rune on joining the 'big guys', Djokovic's praise & the locker-room 'poker face'

Welcome to Locker Room Code, where ATP Tour players share the stories behind life on Tour. From unwritten rules and rookie mistakes to friendships and unforgettable moments, this series goes beyond the baseline. This week, Holger Rune — who is returning to the court for the first time since last October — reflects on his first encounters with his idols. Read all instalments of Locker Room Code here.

By the summer of 2023, Holger Rune was beginning to look very much at home among the biggest names in tennis.

Just eight months earlier, the Dane had announced himself in spectacular fashion by winning the ATP Masters 1000 in Paris, where he defeated five Top-10 opponents — including Novak Djokovic — en route to the 2022 title. When Rune arrived as the World No. 6 at Wimbledon the following year, there was another milestone waiting for him when he entered the seeded locker room at the All England Club.

“Djokovic was very nice to give me advice when I was young,” Rune told ATPTour.com when asked about his early experiences on Tour. “The first time that I got to the seeded locker room in Wimbledon, he came up to me and said, ‘Congrats, you deserve to be here.’ That was a nice little statement to get when you enter the ‘big guys' locker room.”

Just 20 at the time, Rune had already gone from being the kid watching those players on television to sharing the biggest stages in the sport with them. His rise had been remarkably quick: He had broken into the Top 100 only 18 months earlier, before climbing all the way into the Top 10 and establishing himself as one of the sport’s leading young stars.

But his first encounters with the legends of the game came even earlier, when he was still a junior trying to take in the surreal reality of life around the Tour.

“It was crazy because, all of a sudden, I was sharing locker rooms with people like Rafa Nadal and Djokovic, who are players that I've looked up to all my life,” Rune said. “I remember one of the first times was actually when I played Junior French Open and I was all of a sudden warming up next to Federer. He was about to play his quarter-final against Wawrinka, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy. We're literally warming up five metres from each other and doing the same routines’.

“They [the Big Three] were all very nice when I came onto the Tour. In Brisbane in 2024, I trained with Rafa and in the locker room afterwards, he was extremely nice: asking me questions about my offseason and everything… It was just a really cool moment. Even though I had been on Tour for a few years already, it was still an amazing moment. It's something that you will never forget.”

There were lessons to be taken from those encounters, too, with Djokovic particularly willing to offer advice as Rune found his feet on Tour. But there is an unavoidable point at which the relationship between established champions and an emerging player changes: the young player eventually becomes a genuine threat.

“To share these moments and get some advice when you can is amazing,” Rune explained. “But obviously it gets more and more difficult to have these sorts of moments when you go up the rankings because then you’re one of their real competitors.”

Rune's point is already evident in his own relationship with Djokovic, who leads their entertaining Lexus ATP Head2Head series 4-2, a reminder that the teenager who once looked to Djokovic for advice is now regularly lining up on the other side of the net.

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That changing dynamic is at the heart of what makes the tennis locker room such a peculiar environment. Players can be friendly one minute, sitting within metres of each other before a match, before having to put that relationship aside and compete with the intensity required at the highest level.

“You want to be friendly as a human off the court, but at the same time, you have to be a warrior when you step on the court and not care about the opponent and just try to beat him,” Rune said. “Every sign of weakness is noticed, even in the locker room. So you have to put your poker face on, no matter how you feel.

“If you have issues with your body, you have to try to not show the guys in the locker room because everybody's watching everyone. That plays a big factor. It's difficult because you go from being good lads to being competitors to then being good lads again. It's a weird dynamic, but I think most players have a pretty good feel for it and we all understand the sport and how it is.”

The switch is particularly obvious in the minutes before a match, when players may be sitting just metres from the person they are about to try to beat. There might be a brief greeting or a final exchange of pleasantries, but once the preparation begins, Rune says most players know how to retreat into their own space.

“I'm usually pretty focused before the match. We go in the warm up and you say ‘Hey, hope it's a good match’, and stuff like that,” Rune said. “Maybe sometimes you can even be in the toilet next to your opponent just before the match.”

Then the headphones go in and the outside world begins to disappear.

“I think many players and myself, we are good at locking in,” Rune said. “We put the headphones in. We feel like we are in our own world even though we are surrounded by a lot of people.”

Once the match is over, however, the tension can disappear almost as quickly as it arrived. That ability to separate the competition from the people is something Rune believes players gradually learn, allowing the locker room to return to the relaxed environment it usually is.

“I think that the energy is usually pretty good. We’re very good at being competitive on the court, but then in the locker room, I don't think many players have problems,” Rune said. “The energy is usually good.”

For Rune, who climbed to a career-high No. 4 in the PIF ATP Rankings in August 2023 and has established himself as a regular presence deep at the biggest tournaments, the people around him can be just as important as the surroundings. He naturally gravitates towards some of the younger players he grew up competing against, but his friendships are not restricted by generation or ranking.

“You’re definitely watching who's next to you in the locker room,” Rune said. “But again, I'm pretty easy. Especially some of the younger players that I grew up playing with. It's nice to be near them and have some good conversations with them.

“But even some of the older players, like Monfils. I think Monfils is amazing. Every time you can share a good laugh with him.”

For Rune, that’s probably the locker room code in a nutshell. You can spend hours trying to beat someone, but once the match is done, you can have a laugh, catch up and get back to the work.