Tomic opponent in eight-hour rat race to Roland Garros

Marco Trungelliti is a 28-year-old Argentine tennis player who has never cracked the top 100 and has made just three appearances at a grand slam.

He’s also a continent-hopping driver desperate for a lucky break.

When Australian No.1 Nick Kyrgios withdrew from the French Open on Sunday – where he was due to face countryman Bernard Tomic – it was assumed India’s Prajnesh Gunneswaran would take his place as a lucky loser.

Players who are defeated in qualifying can remain on hand at grand slams to fill the void when others pull out with injury, with the two entrants splitting the first-round prize money.

The process has become more common since the rules were changed to punish injured players who attempt to play before retiring or losing badly.

In unprecedented and rather comical scenes at Roland Garros, however, the tournament ran out of lucky losers.

A glut of withdrawals left seven players already promoted to the 128-man main event, with Egypt’s Mohamed Safwat the only unsuccessful qualifying entrant to put his name down.

Gunneswaran would have been next in line but he was ruled out of the race because he was already in main draw of another tournament this week, an ATP Challenger event in Vicenza, Italy.

It then emerged he could actually take the lucky loser’s spot if granted a release by the tournament supervisor in Vicenza, but there were two problems.

Gunneswaran had already departed Paris long ago, and French Open officials would have refused to let him back in anyway.

The debacle surrounding the process was summed up by Thanasi Kokkinakis’s reaction to being urged by a fan to head back to Roland Garros.

Enter Trungelliti, who had lost his final-round qualifying match on Friday.

The Argentine was so far down the lucky loser list that he returned to his base in Barcelona over the weekend.

But he wasn’t switched off from the world.

When it was all but confirmed that Gunneswaran would not be able to take part, Trungelliti loaded up his car with his brother Andre, mother Susi and grandmother Lela – and his tennis gear.

Off he went.

His family had reportedly only flown from Argentina to Barcelona last week to visit Trungelliti and his new wife Nadir.

Now they were on their way to Paris.

A spanner was thrown into the works when organisers went ahead and scheduled Tomic’s first-round match for 11am Monday morning (7pm Monday night AEST).

It’s safe to say he wasn’t all that concerned, though, with hours to spare on his clock and some catchy songs on the radio.

It did mean, however, that Trungelliti and his family would not get a full night’s sleep before his big match on court nine.

The quartet arrived at Roland Garros just before midnight local time (8am AEST).

He’ll be sleeping now, but in a few hours Trungelliti will be awake and finding the officials so he can sign in to confirm his place in the draw.

Then he’ll hitting the practice courts ahead of his third consecutive appearance at the French Open.

And it will be Tomic’s job to stop the remarkable story in its tracks, all while continuing his comeback.

The one-time world No.17 now sits 206th in the world rankings as he bids to get his tennis career back on track following a stunning fall from grace in 2017.

He has not won an ATP tour-level match in 2018 but he did reach the final of a clay Challenger tournament two weeks ago as a positive step to building some form for the remainder of the year.

with AAP