Agamenone and a shocking story: doping, the fight for mango and the blow he waited all his life

Sebastián Báez, one of the best players of the season on slow courts – he has 21 wins and is the third most successful of the year on that surface -, was surprised on his debut in Umag and lost with Franco Agamemnon (29 years old, 136th in the standings) for 3-6, 6-1 and 7-5. But who is Agamenone, who recently took his first ATP victory in the Croatian tournament just two months after playing his first match at that level at Roland Garros? The story of him is shocking.

Agamenone is from Rio de Janeiro, a fanatic fan of the River to the point of persecuting the songs of his fans on YouTube, a 100 percent football fan who reads phrases by Marcelo Bielsa and Marcelo Gallardo to motivate himself and a staunch defender of the consumption of mate and dulce de leche. So far, Argentina on the stick.

But for the ATP, Agamenone is Italian. How come?

In the resumption of tennis after the pandemic he had no money left. A ten-month suspension for a doping control was also over who tested positive in a tournament in Pinamar. So by the middle of that 2020, he only had a handful of interclub matches in Italy to collect. But he found that there were cash prizes in that country’s national championship even though, to play, he had to take that nationality. And he did.

At the beginning of last year he had to make another strong decision: he left his home in Lecce and for four months he settled in Cairo (Egypt) and Monastir (Tunisia) where he played nine M15 tournaments, with only 15 thousand dollars in prize money. It went very well for him: he won three and reached two more finals. He added $ 10,134, which, with the discounts, has dropped to about $ 7,800. Until a year ago he played M25 tournaments but between August and September he won two challengers in Prague and Kyiv. And he began to see the light.

This Friday he will go to the semifinals against the Italian Cecchinato, the same who reached the semifinals of Roland Garros in 2018 and who was top 20, in the first round of a day that will end on the central field with the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz against Facundo Bagnis, who beat the French Corentin Moutet 6-3, 6-1.

Far from his days as a Futures player, Agamenone will continue to write another chapter in its history.