Marco Trungelliti’s debut into the world’s top 100 at the age of 36 earlier this year occurred a decade after the most difficult period of his life.
The Argentine made headlines around the world for his involvement in a match-fixing investigation that resulted in the suspension of three players from his country, the most high-profile of those being Nicolas Kicker. In 2015, he and other players were approached by match-fixers to manipulate matches in exchange for money. Something that he then reported.
Four years later, Trungelliti told the Associated Press that he felt used and abandoned by the Tennis Integrity Unit with no proper support. An allegation that TIU denied. The fallout from the investigation resulted in the tennis player receiving death threats on social media, and eventually, he was driven to relocate to Andorra, which is where he still lives.
Even now, Trungelliti continues to feel hurt by what happened and frustrated with the current governing structure of tennis. At the French Open on Sunday, he won his first main draw match at Roland Garros since 2018 by beating Kyrian Jacquet in straight sets.
“I was very innocent in the sense that I was expecting that the system would help me out a little bit, and it was completely the opposite,” he told reporters in Paris.
“The whole package of institutions was never there, and they are still not there.
“We’re still looking for the system to be more supportive of the players, but we are too far from that. We are still very separated in terms of the governing bodies.”
Trungelliti now plays the occasional tournament in his native Argentina and played the Buenos Aires Open for the first time in six years last season. Inevitably, there were good feelings about playing at home, but it is still an emotional roller-coaster.
“When I went back to Buenos Aires, it was tough, because it was also the last tournament that I played there before everything went public. I couldn’t manage the feelings. It was too much for me back then. I thought I was prepared, but I wasn’t,” he explains.
“So maybe next year. Maybe I’m not prepared at all to go back and play there, but we’ll see. Lately, I played in the Davis Cup from Argentina, and I felt amazing. But I still feel like I have a spine in my heart, and it’s going to be there forever.”
It is for this reason that the world No.81 is unsure what his future has in store and where he will spend it.
“I’ve been living in Andorra. It’s amazing for me and my wife, and we feel very safe there. The quality of life is amazing. Argentina right now is having a hard time, but that’s it.” He commented.
“Ten years ago, I was very afraid to go back, and for a certain period, I wasn’t able to go back because I was very afraid. The feelings that I had when I went back and tried to play the tournaments weren’t great.
Maybe in the future. It depends on how brave I am to go back, but it’s a long story. I don’t want to put myself in a box and then say I would never go back, because everybody is a bad human there. It’s not the right thing. There are a lot of good human beings in Argentina, and I also got a lot of love. But in the end, the wrong guys were the ones who were louder than the good ones.”
Trungelliti will next play Karen Khachanov in Paris.
