{"id":664423,"date":"2026-05-11T19:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/664423\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T19:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:01:11","slug":"former-grand-slam-finalist-says-swedish-tennis-youngsters-are-afraid-to-compete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/664423\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Grand Slam finalist says Swedish tennis youngsters are afraid to compete"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"wcl-news-perex\" itemprop=\"description\">Former Grand Slam finalist Magnus Norman says that Swedish youngsters need to compete more if Sweden are to develop young talents with a potential of making a name for themselves on the WTA and ATP Tours. <\/p>\n<p>There was a time when Sweden dominated the world of tennis with players like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/wilander-mats\/KQlqiWhO\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mats Wilander<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/borg-bjorn\/EcVHJwIF\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bjorn Borg<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/edberg-stefan\/OGjCfEga\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stefan Edberg<\/a>, and others. Today, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/ymer-elias\/GhVfMwlD\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elias Ymer<\/a> is by far the best-ranked of all Swedish men&#8217;s players in 175th place.<\/p>\n<p>On the women&#8217;s side, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/rinaldo-persson-kajsa\/IBGyxZ49\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kajsa Rinaldo Persson<\/a> is the best Swede in 253rd place.<\/p>\n<p>The question is whether Sweden has the capacity to recreate the glory years when they had a great number of male players in the Top 20 rankings?<\/p>\n<p>Ex-star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/norman-magnus\/tMYhArqM\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Magnus Norman<\/a>, now long-time coach and founder of the tennis academy Good to Great, has a clear opinion on how to nurture tomorrow&#8217;s new tennis stars.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Competition can sometimes appear as a dirty word,&#8221; Norman wrote in his newsletter earlier this year about how he experiences Swedish sports culture today.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And Norman has a clear message. &#8220;Children and young people must compete more. Play a lot of matches and compete for points to understand the game.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have had good juniors, but we have not done a good enough job in the transition phase between juniors and seniors&#8221;, he says to Expressen.se. &#8220;When I&#8217;m out and about, I talk to many international coaches and, generally speaking, many people there learn to compete quite early.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Norman who reached the final of the French Open in year 2000, points out at the same time that it&#8217;s not just about learning to win. Equally important, if not more important, is the art of learning to deal with defeat.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you lose, there is often a new tournament around the corner. So you don&#8217;t have to be too broken or depressed. You have to learn to be able to take something with you from the losses. What can I do better next time? What did I do well? And then you go home and work on it. Hopefully, it will be better in the next game.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Grand Slam finalist Magnus Norman says that Swedish youngsters need to compete more if Sweden are to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-664423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}