Whistle blower who fled Argentina reflects on reaching Wimbledon
· Yahoo Sports
Amid the title challengers and young hopefuls battling it out at Wimbledon this year is a man who embodies the idea that persistence will eventually pay off.
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Argentinian Marco Trungelliti earned direct entry into the men’s singles at the All England Club for the first time this year at the age of 36 after becoming the oldest man for more than 50 years to break into the top 100.
Trungelliti had been scrapping away in tennis’ unglamorous backwaters for a decade and a half, holding on to the belief that his time could yet come.
“Sometimes it feels strange being the oldest human on earth to break into the 100,” he joked in an interview with the Press Association.
“It took a while, of course. I thought I was ready maybe two years ago but not before because I wasn’t mature enough to deal especially with the losses.
“Every time I was losing a match that I wasn’t supposed to lose, I was kind of getting depressed. At some point I had to learn, right? And I was convinced that I could do it.”
As well as a mental shift, a conversation with his wife two years ago brought Trungelliti’s future in the sport into stark reality.
“We had our kid,” he said. “He was one year old and I was still fighting between 220, 230 (in the rankings) and so we had a very straight conversation and said, ‘OK, this is the last year, if I don’t make it better’.”
Trungelliti would be justified in believing that, as well as a reward for his efforts over the years, his breakthrough is also karma for a good deed he did eight years ago that uprooted his life.
After being approached by match-fixers, Trungelliti turned whistle blower, giving testimony in an investigation that resulted in three Argentinian players receiving bans.
He has spoken in the past of a feeling of being abandoned by the authorities and, fearing for his and his wife’s safety, he left his country and moved to Andorra.
“It affected me a lot,” he said. “When everything became public, it was the beginning of 2018, and I got, let’s say, my life back by the end of 2020.
“So it took me a long time and I was very, very close to quitting because my mind was completely devastated in a way that I didn’t want to go to tournaments.”
Trungelliti remembers the turning point as a Covid-related hotel lockdown in Portugal, where he ran up and down a 30-metre corridor and decided not to let what happened dictate his future.
“I’m pretty sure that all my life was compacted in those 30 minutes that I was running,” he said.
“I made the decision of being much more responsible for everything that was going on in my life instead of putting myself as a victim, which wasn’t really helpful.
“Also for my wife, it was tough. Having a husband that before I had some life and now the guy is kind of gone. I don’t want to say that I was close to killing myself, but I wasn’t living life.”
Trungelliti finally went back to Argentina five years later to introduce his son to his dying grandmother.
“I didn’t want to have that spine on my heart for my whole life,” he added. “I’m very proud of how we took that decision because it was tough.”
He remains uncomfortable in his home country and is not sure he will play there again after competing in Buenos Aires last year.
“It was very tough,” he said. “But not for the people itself, it’s just me, because it was the last tournament that I played there when everything came public. Maybe I go back next year, maybe I don’t. I don’t know because I’m not having good feelings.”
Trungelliti’s breakthrough has changed his hand-to-mouth existence, and he no longer has to choose between having his coach or physio travelling with him and having enough money to feed his family.
Even if he loses in the first round on Tuesday against American Martin Damm, Trungelliti will receive £80,000 ($106,000) in prize money.
For the Argentinian, meanwhile, one of the best feelings was not having to compete in qualifying at nearby Roehampton, having succeeded only once in 10 attempts.
“I went to Roehampton just to see a friend who was playing,” he added. “I just don’t want to go back there. It’s as simple as that. It was beautiful, just to come here and be like, ‘No more Roehampton for me’.”