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The majority of the players the International Tennis Integrity Agency comes down on – with notable and famous exceptions – are rather small fish in the big tennis ocean.

But the ITIA’s announcement Monday that former player and, until today, coach, Marinko Matosevic had been given a four-year suspension under the anti-doping program casts a net far wider than just the 40-year old former top-40 player himself.

An independant tribunal determined that Matosevic was guilty of five anti-doping rule violations between 2018 and 2020.

The ITIA clearly had their statement prepared to go RIGHT out, because the decision came down just today.

Matosevic’s last tournament match came in the final round of qualifying at a Challenger at Indian Wells, exactly eight years ago.

It wasn’t just that they determined he had used blood doping as a player, and facilitated another player to blood dope.

They also found that he had provided advice to other players on how to avoid positive tests, and that he both used and possessed clenbuterol, which is a prohibited substance.

Independant tribunal chair Michael Keron said Matosevic’s actions “went far beyond passive association and constitute intentional participation” and that his “conduct strikes at the integrity of the anti-doping framework”.

It’s a tangled web

***Matosevic at the Australian Open in 2015.***

The usual process

The ITIA investigations turned up the potential transgressions by Matosevic only in 2024, long after he had retired as a player.

On May 15, 2025, they formally charged him, and he denied the charges. So the case was referred to an independant tribunal, with a video conference scheduled for Feb. 9.

This is when it got messy. The ITIA said Matosevic had “ceased to engage with the arbitration process”. And then he issued a statement to the media, where he admitted to one blood doping charge.

He didn’t attend the hearing, which went on without him.

Matosevic talks to The First Serve

The Australian “First Serve” website had reported Matosevic – who clearly is a “friend of the show”, as the expression goes – was under investigation, without providing any details.

He reached out to them Feb. 2 to release a statement, saying he’d been under investigation since the 2024 Italian Open and saying he’d had a blood transfusion in Morelos, Mexico in 2018 because of “desperate circumstances (he referred to respiratory issues and viruses) and that it was “stupid and reckless”. And that he retired the following week because he was “so disgusted” with himself.

He also got in some serious jabs at the ITIA, accusing its process of being “corrupt” and “lacking credibility”. He said the other charges were put together from old text messages.

He said that his alleged transgressions were discovered through messages in another player’s phone.

Marinko Matosevic did a long interview with them as well, in which he lays out the timeline.

It’s pretty out there – definitely worth a listen.

He said the Clenbuterol accusation was a question from a player he contends might have been in Mexico, where numerous players have been dinged for it because of tainted meat. And another from a female friend asking him about Ozempic, and him “recommending Clenbuterol”. And that they took one, and one and one and came up with five, basically.

Matosevic addeed that two of the charges were when he was a “civilian” and out of the game, to which the ITIA countered that he had never officially retired (which you’d imagine they’d determine by his withdrawing from the ITIA anti-doping program).

He did officially “retire” in that sense on Nov. 1, 2024.

And Matosevic throws out a BUNCH of shade, including to a top female player he claims had as many as seven TUEs (therapeutic use exemptions), and about the prevalent use of Adderall, which he characterizes as “legal cheating”.

It’s hard to tell what he thought he would gain out of this approach. Perhaps he thought that if he was to go out it would be with a bang, not a whimper. Or something.

18-month suspension for Aussie Max Purcell

After the retirement, coaching

Per The First Serve, Matosevic resurfaced the following year as the head coach of an academy in Bali, reportedly owned by a Russian millionaire.

After that, he popped up as the coach of various players, including Aussies Chris O’Connell, whom he stopped working with in late 2024 and Jordan Thompson (until Wimbledon 2025). Much of that time simultaneously.

He said he was due to have the hearing last December. But that was postponed, so he did the pre-season and the Aussie summer with Thompson, through to the Australian Open.

***Matosevic with O’Connell at Indian Wells in 2023***

Big sanctions

The ITIA dropped the charge for “possession and use of clenbuterol” that pre-dated 2020, citing “lack of evidence”, though “it was noted to be likely”.

His results and prize money from the Morelos and Indian Wells ATP Challenger tournaments in February 2018 were disqualified. That’s a total of $520 US, which he must repay for the suspension to end on March 15, 2030.

He cannot “coach or work with any player in any context”.

The ITIA will release the the full written decision once “redactions have been made to preserve anonymity of related individuals, and the confidentiality of parallel investigations.”