by Mauro Cappiello

A little bit later than usual, here’s our Happy New Year post, as we start our first season after the end of the partnership between Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer.

We had taken a short break from the website, like we had done several times last year, in the periods when our famous duo was away from the spotlight. These two years of Team Fedberg have been a fantastic moment of growth for our project, but also a very demanding experience for us, who were used to running a website connected to current news to a much smaller extent. Edberg was tired of traveling, we were overwhelmed by fresh information, as we were trained to look back to the past, rather than to follow the present.

We have done our best to keep you up-to-date with anything done by Edberg and Federer together and with anything said on them on the web. We have gone deep into the news, creating specials, videos, photo stories and the outcome of this effort is now an almost day-by-day diary of these two years, collecting more than 200 posts that are meant to become even more.

The owners of the Facebook page Happy Slam Tennis decided to wish their followers a very special Merry Christmas this year.

They created this video in which the elf versions of Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi and Pat Rafter play and sing "Rocking around the Christmas Tree".

In the clip, Stefan plays the contrabass along with Pete Sampras and closes the song with a vocal solo that will make you cry with laughter.

Who wouldn't love such a rock band to play for real?

Enjoy your Christmas holiday!

Former Wimbledon referee and supervisor Alan Mills officially retired from tennis this month, with a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall during the London stage of the ATP Champions Tour.

On that occasion, he was a special guest of The Tennis Podcast for their final release of 2015.

Presenter David Law asked him to single out a player that impressed him the most throughout his long journey in the world of tennis. Mr Mills chose Rod Laver as a player to watch and Stefan Edberg and Pat Rafter for their attitude.

In particular, he wanted to recall an episode concerning Stefan, happened 25 years ago in Miami, that once again reminds us all of how great a sportsman the Swede is.

from ATP World Tour.com

Stefan Edberg was presented with an International Tennis Hall of Fame ring by Christopher Clouser, Chairman of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum and Todd Martin, the CEO of the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum.

The ceremony underlined the Swede’s illustrious playing career, during which he recorded 806 wins, won 41 titles and attained number one in the Emirates ATP Rankings in both singles and doubles. The serve-and-volleyer reached the final of all four Grand Slam events, winning six in total. He defeated nemesis Boris Becker to capture the 1989 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals and finished runner-up to Andre Agassi the following year.

The London resident is now in the midst of a successful second career in tennis, coaching World No. 3 Roger Federer, who has already qualified for the semi-finals of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals by winning his first two round-robin matches in straight sets.

Some pictures from last October 28th, when the staff of the Israeli start-up Playsight was hosted by Stefan Edberg and Magnus Larsson at the Södra Climate Arena in Växiö for a demonstration with some members of the Ready Play Tennis Academy.

Back in 2013, the Climate Arena was one of the first facilities in the world to install the Smart Court technology for the analysis ot tennis data, an application that is becoming more and more helpful for coaches and players.

Invited to a literature festival at Cheltenham, England, to promote his new book, Boris Becker met the media and, twelve years after the first time, talked once more about his assumption of sleeping pills in the early '90s.

As vintage tennis fans and long time readers of this website will know, the German revealed this hard moment of his life in his 2003 autobiography "Boris Becker - The player". To stand the pressure of the expectations of an entire nation, Becker abused sleeping pills for five years in his professional career and this addiction, in his words, influenced the result of his 1990 Wimbledon final against Stefan Edberg.

At the Times Forum in Cheltenham last Monday, the former world number one recalled that period of his life.

from The Challenge (Arnesen-Tennis)
by Jonas Arnesen
translated into English by Mauro Cappiello

Elias Ymer will probably live the greatest adventure in his life. After the SkiStar Swedish Open tournament, the 19-year-old from Sweden will take part in a training camp with Roger Federer.

- It's great and it will be great to learn from the best of all time, says Elias.

During Wimbledon, the Swedish future hope had the chance to hit with Federer before a match and the 17-time Grand Slam champion liked what he saw in Elias, who will now be the sparring partner of the world number two in a three-day camp in Zurich.

- It was Stefan (Federer's coach, Stefan Edberg) who asked me, says Elias who obviously did not need thinking twice before saying yes.

- I have two weeks off after Båstad. Roger is the greatest in history and to have the opportunity to train with him is amazing. When Stefan texted me at Wimbledon and asked if I could hit with Roger the day after I felt both amused and nervous. When we stood there, I thought, "Hey, I am standing and hitting balls with Roger Federer that I saw on TV thousands of times."

by Mauro Cappiello

STE…fans celebrates its 14th anniversary today and like last year we didn’t receive the gift of seeing Stefan Edberg win another Wimbledon trophy, as Roger Federer’s coach, but we were rewarded hitting the amazing target of 50,000 fans on Facebook.

by Mauro Cappiello

In some years from now, Sweden will recall the 2015 edition of Wimbledon not only for the massive presence and good results of home coaches (Edberg, Bjorkman, Norman), but also for what might be one of the early signs of a Swedish tennis reinassance.

The sixteen-year-old Mikael Ymer played the final of the junior event, losing in straight sets to American Reilly Opelka.

Mikael, younger son of 19-year-old Elias Ymer who has already got a world singles rank of number 132, only realised at the very last moment he had missed the deadline to join the tournament, so the All England Club decided to give him a wild card into the main draw. He exploited this opportunity reaching the Championship match without losing a set along the way.

by Mauro Cappiello

Ops, Boris Becker did it again... Like his first autobiography, published in 2003 and internationally known with the title "The Player", also his new book has raised a lot of reactions.

In the blosson of the newly extended grasscourt season, with only a few days left to the start of the Championships, Becker launched the volume "Wimbledon: My Life and Career at the All England Club." But more than the German's narration of his three trophies and four finals at SW19, what caught the media attention were the book contents anticipated by English daily "The Telegraph", especially his comparisons between today's and yesterday's tennis worlds and some "behind the scenes" connected to his new role as coach of Novak Djokovic.

If one may agree that today's players are limited by too many rules preventing them from being themselves on court, fans and commentators were left wondering about the need of the German's comments on the relationship between the current world number one and Roger Federer.