Argentina’s 36-year-old Marco Trungelliti proved tennis dreams do not come \u2060with an expiration date when he became the oldest first-time tour-level finalist in the Open \u200cEra after beating the top seed at the Grand Prix \u200cHassan II semi-finals in Marrakech on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Trungelliti<\/a>, \u200cwho came through the tournament’s qualifiers, upset Italy’s defending \u200cchampion Luciano Darderi<\/a> 6-4, 7-6(2)<\/a> to break the \u200cprevious record held by Victor Estrella Burgos of the Dominican Republic, who reached his first final aged \u200c34 years in 2015.<\/p>\n Darderi, ranked 19 \u2060in the world, was \u200conly six years old when Trungelliti turned pro in 2008. With \u200bthe victory, Trungelliti secured just his second career top-20 win.<\/p>\n “Of course, I believed it, that’s \u200bone of the reasons that I’m here. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible,” Trungelliti said in the \u2060on-court interview.<\/p>\n “I’ve worked \u200ba lot, me and my team and also my wife, my kid. We all believed in breaking the record basically and that\u2019s exactly what we \u200chave done now.”<\/p>\n The milestone caps a remarkable journey for Trungelliti, who made his first ATP Tour semi-final in 2018 in Umag, Croatia – 402 weeks ago.<\/p>\n Having entered the tournament ranked 117 in the world, Trungelliti’s breakthrough week has already guaranteed he will crack the top 100 for the first time. He is currently ranked number 75 \u200cin the live rankings.<\/p>\n “It’s been happening the whole \u200bweek, leaving the court with a victory,” added \u200cTrungelliti, who has dropped only one set at the tournament. “So hopefully (there) is one more to go.”<\/p>\n He will face Rafael Jodar<\/a> on Sunday after the Spaniard prevented an all-Argentine final with \u2060a 6-2, 6-1<\/a> \u2060victory over Camilo \u200cUgo Carabelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Argentina’s 36-year-old Marco Trungelliti proved tennis dreams do not come \u2060with an expiration date when he became the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-515841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}