The tennis world mourns the loss of former World No. 25 Peter Lundgren, who has passed away at the age of 59. In the 1980s golden era for Swedish tennis, Lundgren was one of seven Swedes ranked in the Top 25.
Lundgren notably coached Roger Federer in the Swiss icon’s early career. It was a successful three-year partnership that featured Federer’s first of 20 major triumphs at Wimbledon in 2003.
Lundgren’s countryman Magnus Norman, former World No. 2 wrote on social media: “R.I.P Peter Lundgren. A fantastic warm and positive person and on top of that a magical coach has left us way to early. A very sad day.”
Darren Cahill added: “A good man with a kind soul. A helluva coach also.”
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As a player, Lundgren collected three tour-level singles titles and as many in doubles. He won 119 singles matches with his maiden title coming in 1985 in Cologne. Two years later, Lundgren lifted trophies in Rye Brook and San Francisco. He was voted the ATP Tour’s Most Improved Player that year. In 1988, Lundgren reached the Australian Open doubles final alongside Briton Jeremy Bates.
When Lundgren retired aged 30, he first worked with Marcelo Rios in 1996 and helped the Chilean into the Top 10. The following year, Lundgren began working with juniors at the Swiss Tennis Federation.
From November 2000 until the end of 2003, Lundgren travelled full-time with Federer. Lundgren was an essential part in Federer’s young breakthrough, guiding him to his first 11 tour-level titles.
Lundgren was in Marat Safin’s corner when the former No. 1 clinched the 2005 Australian Open title. Lundgren also coached stars such as Marcos Baghdatis, Grigor Dimitrov and Stan Wawrinka.
Hall of fame tennis writer Richard Evans wrote on X: “Tragic that #Swedish coach Peter Lundgren has died so young at 59. He was very popular on the tour & admired as a coach. The memory of a breakfast we had at Hotel Diana in #Milan remains with me. The 3rd person at the table was @rogerfederer who, that day, would go on to win his 1st ever @ATPTour title – the 1st of over 100. Peter was his coach in Roger’s vital formative years. That’s a great legacy.”
<img src=”/-/media/images/news/2024/08/23/17/34/lundgren-coach-federer.jpg” style=”width:100%;” alt=”Peter Lundgren.” />
Credit: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
The following is an excerpt from Elements of Coaching Professional Tennis, available on Amazon, written by Robert Davis.
Lundgren first encountered greatness at the age of 18 years old when he was invited to practise with Björn Borg in Stockholm. Though Borg had recently retired from professional tennis, he was still one of the best players in the world. As one of Sweden’s top juniors, Lundgren got the call to practise from Borg.
“Being around Björn (Borg) was so good for me,” admits Lundgren. “I could see how professional he was with his preparation. When it was time to warm up, we had only four balls and Björn would never miss once. Then we just played sets. He only wanted to play sets, no drills, no talking, only play.”
How Lundgren got from the small, sparsely populated city of Sundsvall in northeastern Sweden, which means the city of stone, to Stockholm is a testament to the “Swedish Tennis Miracle”. That was what the Swedish government called the incredible success of men’s tennis following Björn Borg’s rise to the top of the tennis world. In the 1980s, Sweden had seven players ranked in the world’s top 25.
“As a child, I played ice hockey in the winter and tennis in the summer until I was 13 years old,” remembers Lundgren. “Then I stopped hockey and focused just on tennis. I may have had four hours per week of supervised practice, the rest was just playing sets. However, in the beginning, when I was learning to play my club teacher was very good at teaching technique. So, my strokes were always solid and I never really had to change as I got older. When I turned seventeen, I had to move to Stockholm if I wanted to play professionally.”
Lundgren became a professional in 1983 and rose up the world rankings very quickly. He won his first ATP Tour event in Cologne in 1985. In 1987, he was voted the ATP Tour Most Improved Player. Lundgren achieved a career-high ranking of World No. 25 and won three ATP Tour singles titles.
“Besides all the great Swedish players,” Lundgren says. “I was able to play some of the legends like; McEnroe, Connors, and Lendl. I believe that helped me tremendously as a coach. I had seen a lot of good tennis, and I knew what it took to be great. So, I was not in awe of the talent of Marcelo (Rios), Roger (Federer), or Marat (Safin). And the same with Marcos (Baghdatis) and Grigor (Dmitrov). It was more like, right, yes, you are a very good player, but we need to do this and that to get to the next step higher.”
One mistake that often happens with the coach-player relationship, is when they become overly familiar and confuse kindness with weakness.
“There comes a time in every coach and player relationship where the coach has to make a stand,” claims Lundgren. “Are you going to keep quiet and take the money? Once, I asked Marat (Safin), ‘Why did you hire me? Just to throw balls at you in practice? Or to tell you what you need to do to improve?’ Either the player listens to me or I walk. The players knew that if it got to the point that I said that I would walk, I meant it. In a strange way that gave me more credibility with them. I believe they appreciated the honesty and the fact that I was just not riding their backs for a better lifestyle.”
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