On March 8th in Jönköping, a Swedish town in the region of Småland two hours by car from Västervik, the local tennis club will celebrate the World Tennis Day with a Mini Challenger event that will field 24 teams of juniors aged 14-18, representing as many Swedish tennis clubs.

This sort of mini Davis Cup will be held in connection with the ATP Challenger tournament and will have Stefan Edberg as special guest, the website of the Swedish Tennis Federation reports.

Stefan will have a lecture about his two years as coach of Roger Federer and will be once more an inspiration for lots of Swedish kids playing tennis.

The prize for the winners of the competition will be a two-day tennis camp at the Ready Play Academy in Växjö, run by Stefan Edberg, Magnus Larsson and Carl-Axel Hageskog. (mc)

Download the full schedule of the day (in Swedish)»

Almost every year during his professional career Stefan Edberg has celebrated his birthday at the Australian Open and, whenever he has played on January 19th, he has never lost a match.

Now that he has turned 50 years old, we want to recall his career at the Australian Open with 50 images from his moments at what has become the first Grand Slam event of the year.

A tournament that has been at the same time so successful and so painful for him.

The former number one from Sweden, now an analyst for Eurosport, asked the Swiss how he is trying to combine the technical approaches of his last two coaches, Edberg and Ljubicic, saying that Stefan's influence is still clearly visible in his more offensive game.

In the video below you can watch Roger's answer and, once again, his words full of gratitude and appreciation for his advisor, who is no longer in his team this year, but we are sure will find the time to watch Roger's semifinal against Novak Djokovic on TV from Sweden. (mc)

During Roger Federer's second round match with Dolgopolov at the Australian Open, the press noticed a particularly good performance by the Swiss on the defensive side and tried to solicit him on this point in the media room.

The 17-time Major winner said he has worked on defense as well in the offseason, but denied he has done a specific preparation on this aspect of his game, confirming (like he had already done before the Australian Open) that his training routine has not changed since Stefan Edberg's departure from his team.

«I like to work on my strength most of the time, the offensive part of my game, serve and volley, taking the forehand early, you know, using my backhand as a variation,» replied the Swiss.

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

(picture by Arne Forsells)

Today Stefan Edberg turns 50 years old. Big and hearty congratulations! But what else should I write that has not already been written or said about the sympathetic Västervik Son?

Six Grand Slam titles in singles, three in doubles, a total of 41 singles and 18 doubles titles, three Davis Cup victories, the Olympic bronze and 72 weeks as world number one.

That's a mini summary of his fabulous career that I have been privileged to follow as a journalist.

It started back in the early 1980s, when Stefan's father Bengt was kind enough to call the Barometern newspaper in Kalmar to tell his kid had played and how it had gone.

Usually it went well. Very well.

But Stefan himself was not so talkative. He hasn't been in recent years, either.

As a star in the spotlight in one of the world's largest sports, he managed to preserve his reclusive ways. Similarly, after the end of his career. When other former top players criticized - sometimes very loudly - their successors, Stefan kept quiet.

Sure, once you've sometimes wished that he would have burst in public, for example on how things have been managed in Swedish tennis over the years, but no, we will probably never get to experience the day when Stefan Edberg will go out and criticize someone.

Stefan Edberg with Roger Federer at the 2015 Australian Open

Roger Federer is no longer working with Stefan Edberg, but still speaks with great affection of the period with the tennis legend in his team. The Swiss, who advanced to the third round of the Australian Open with a victory in straight sets over Alexandr Dolgopolov, talked about Stefan in the post-match media conference.

"Well, I have gotten used to Ivan Ljubicic now being on the team for the last month or so. It's not that different anymore like it was in the beginning. But it was always special, of course, looking up to the player box and see Stefan there. It's always been kind of surreal to have his support. So we had a very cool experience," said Federer.

For his 50th birthday, Stefan Edberg was reached on the phone by Johanna Jonsson, a contributor of the Swedish Tennis Federation website, who asked him how he spent this special day.

"I'm at home right now, but there will be no big party today. There was a little surprise after midnight here and I was celebrated by friends and acquaintances.”

The journalist also asked him to make an assessment of his life so far: "A lot has happened during these 50 years, - replied Stefan. - Looking back, I've had 50 good years in every way and above all I have experienced a lot of tennis. I have been with my wife for 30 years and feel healthy. I am absolutely satisfied and have nothing to complain about."

by Mauro Cappiello

Today, January 19th, Stefan turns 50 years old and we have prepared a very special birthday wish for him!

As our HOT SHOT!!! video section just reached its 50th issue target, we thought it would be a nice idea to collect in only one clip all those 50 great shots played by Stefan in many different matches all throughout his career.

So, this Golden Anniversary, that we hope you will recall with us sharing and retweeting this video on your favourite social channels, is also the occasion to celebrate the great work of research in our archive and on the web we have done since April 2013, when we first decided to start a section of our video gallery dedicated to the shots of magic Stefan Edberg has delighted us all with for so many years.

by Mauro Cappiello

"När vi var bäst"
by Mats Holm and Ulf Roosvald
Offside - pp. 276, kr225 (€26 - US$33)

"När vi var bäst", the book on the Golden Age of Swedish tennis published in October 2014, will be translated into Italian.

The news was given us by Ulf Roosvald, author with Mats Holm of the volume that was widely appreciated by critics and became a best seller in few months in Sweden.

The Italian version will be edited by Add Editore, an independent publishing house born in Turin in 2010.

So Italy will be the first country (and we hope not the only one) to read the work translated with the title "Game, set, match. Borg, Edberg e Wilander, la Svezia del grande tennis". It will be available in bookshops from the end of next May.

by Mauro Cappiello

picture © Andrea Nay

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.