17 years after he played in his first ATP event, Argentina’s Marco Trungelliti has reached his first Tour-level final at the Grand Prix Hassan II in Morocco.
The 36-year-old stunned top seed Luciano Darderi 6-4, 7-6(2), to reach Sunday’s title match as he continued his remarkable run in Marrakech. Trungelliti sealed his place in the main draw after coming through two rounds of qualifying. Then he produced a fairytale journey by beating three out of the top five seeds in four matches played. Prior to facing Darderi, he also scored wins over third seed Corentin Moutet and fifth seed Kamil Majchrzak.
Trungelliti has become the oldest player in the Open Era to reach their first ATP Final at the Tour level. Breaking a record previously held by Victor Estrella Burgos, who was two years younger than the Argentine when he reached his first final in 2015.
“Of course I believed it, that’s one of the reasons that I’m here, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible,” atptour.com quoted Trungelliti as saying after he beat Darderi. “And also I’ve worked a lot, me and my team and also my wife, my kid, we all believed in breaking the record basically, and that’s exactly what we have done now.”
It is the second record Trungelliti has broken in the past week. Recently, he secured his debut in the top 100 next week, becoming the oldest player to achieve this milestone since the ATP ranking system was introduced. He is now projected to rise to around 75th place. A massive improvement on his previous official best ranking of 112th, which was set in 2019.
“It’s been happening the whole week, leaving the court with a victory,” he said. “So hopefully [there] is one more to go.”
Trungelliti is currently on a 10-match winning streak. Prior to Marrakech, he won a clay-court Challenger title in Rwanda, his fourth piece of silverware on the lower-level circuit since last June.
Earlier in his career, Trungelliti made headlines after providing evidence to the Tennis Integrity Unit about match-fixing in the sport. This led to the suspension of three players from the same country as him, with the most notable being former top-100 player Nicolas Kicker, who initially was hit with a three-year ban before getting four months deducted from his sentence following an appeal. Kicker resumed his career in 2021.
Trungelliti will play Spain’s Rafael Jodar for a chance to win his first ATP trophy. Jodar breezed past Camilo Ugo Carabelli 6-2, 6-1, in his semi-final match.
