Mats Wilander has stepped down as Swedish Davis Cup captain.
The Hall of Famer said he plans to spend more time with his family. Wilander lives in Idaho with his wife, Sonya, and the couple's four children: Emma, Karl, Oscar and Erik.
"I have decided not to go on," Wilander told the Aftonbladet newspaper in comments reprinted by AFP. "It's for purely personal reasons that I have taken this decision, I want to spend more time at home here with my children. It was a difficult decision. I made up my mind three days ago."
Wilander, who has served as Sweden's captain since 2003, played on Sweden's Davis Cup championship teams in 1984, 1985 and 1987. He concluded his Davis Cup career with a 43-16 record (36-14 in singles and 7-2 in doubles). Sweden's best result during Wilander's captaincy came in 2007 when the Swedes reached the semifinals, falling to the United States, 4-1, as Andy Roddick swept singles wins over Thomas Johansson and Jonas Bjorkman to lead the USA, which went on to win the Davis Cup championship.
Wilander earned a reputation as a solid tactician, however in recent years Sweden's Davis Cup drives were slowed by the retirements of Bjorkman and Johansson and assorted injuries to Robin Soderling, the only Swedish man ranked inside the top 100. In Sweden's 3-2 loss to Israel in the Davis Cup World Group first round tie staged in Malmo in March, Soderling's injury-induced absence prompted Wilander to start 178th-ranked Thomas Johansson and injury-plagued Andreas Vinciguerra, who battled Harel Levy for five sets before bowing 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 3-6, 8-6, in a grueling three hour, 34-minute finale.
"We are grateful for these years and the success we've had," Swedish federation general secretary Henrik Kallen said in a post on the federation's website.
Former Austalian Open finalist Thomas Enqvist has been cited as a possible replacement for Wilander. Wilander's good friend, Wilander, Joakim Nystrom, served as coach under Wilander and could also be under consideration. Former French Open finalist Magnus Norman currently coaches Soderling, but it is uncertain if Norman is a candidate.
In 1988, Wilander produced one of the finest single seasons of any man in the Open Era, winning three of the four Grand Slams (a feat even his childhood hero, Bjorn Borg, never accomplished) — the Australian Open, Roland Garros and the U.S. Open — with a quarterfinal loss to the "Big Cat" Miloslav Mecir standing as the sole setback that stopped the Swede from sweeping the Grand Slam. Wilander became the first man since Jimmy Connors in 1974 to win three Grand Slam championships on three different surfaces: grass (the Australian Open), clay (Roland Garros) and hard court (the U.S. Open).
Wilander has coached Paul-Henri Mathieu and Tatiana Golovin in the past and could return to coaching individual players in the future.
