Mumbai: Tennis loves its breakthrough faces rising to overnight stardom, but here’s a tale of perseverance through persistent grind and career, nay, life-challenging obstacles.
Tennis loves narratives of two poster boys sharing a private jet to fly into a tournament, but here’s a tale of a journeyman who once hopped in a rental car and drove over 1,000 kilometres to make it to a Grand Slam as a late replacement.
Tennis loves Alcaraz and Sinner, but here’s a tale of Marco Trungelliti that is just as extraordinary.
At 36, after spending half his career as one of thousands of pros slugging it out in the unrelenting lower rungs of tennis, Trungelliti became the oldest debutant in the ATP’s top 100 rankings in the Open Era. He achieved this after featuring in the ATP 250 Marrakesh title clash as the oldest first-time tour-level finalist.
That is just one part of the Trungelliti tale. The other involves years of battling depression after he became a rare whistleblower in the sport, exposing three of his compatriots in a match-fixing episode. It turned his life upside down instead, forcing the Argentine to leave home after receiving threats from within his country.
That’s a career criss-crossing through promise, hope, struggle, threats, depression, belief and reward.
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