Stefan Edberg

Term Paper Title	Stefan Edberg
# of Words	971
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.88

Stefan Edberg

The tennisplayer Stefan Edberg is nowadays a legend in his sport. I met him
myself  in France in 1987. I was 8 years old. He and the other members of the
Swedish Daviscup team were playing the Daviscup against France. However, before
the training I met them in the lobby of their hotel in Fr�jus. My father knew
the Swedish captain of the team so we could watch them training.After that
Stefan has been one of my idols. I play tennis a lot myself. But now to the
story about Stefan Edberg.

Saw the ad

His career started when the local paper in V�stervik ( the town where he was
born ) had an advertisement about mini-tennis  in the early 70s. It said �Day of
tennis�.Luckily his mother Barbro read the article and liked it. The day after
she sent her son to the tennis-school for beginners. At that time she didn't
know how important this initiative would be to Stefan, to Swedish tennis and
even to the world tennis. An incredible athletic career had seen the morning
light.

Was convinced to continue

The seven year old Stefan struck his first hits at the tennis school in the
sommer of 1973.  To start with  he played once a week. He liked his new sport
but was close to quitting after the first term. -My friend wanted to quit,and so
did I. But my trainer convinced me to continue, Stefan says with a smile on his
face. The young Edberg soon became taken by the sport. Soon he played matches
with the boys' team, and outside his home he played fantasy Davis Cup-matches. In
the sommer holidays he almost lived at the tennis court. At the age of ten he
stopped playing his two other sports, football and icehockey, and concentrated
everything on tennis. Soon he won his first tournament, �Ostkustensp�rla,� a
very memorable victory for him.

Star even in school

But a couple of years went by before he �dared� to go in for tennis full time.
He was in the ninth grade as took the big step and gave tennis the big chance.
-I felt  I had a serious chance of becoming a worldplayer. Because I had
just won JEM and taken a set on Mats Wilander who was a professional player,
Stefan says. But it couldn't have been an easy choice, because Stefan was
also a very good student with an average about 4,3 after the ninth grade.

          He was better than all the others!!!

The trainers at the club where he was training, Westerviks TK, quickly realized
what a big talent this boy was. Just after a couple of years, they noticed that
his way of playing tennis was different from all the great Swedes who played at
that time, for an example Bj�rn Borg. Stefan attacked the net, as quickly as
possible,unlike the baseline players of that time. -I've never liked long rallys,
but I've always had a good serve. I also grew tall pretty early so it fitted me
well to go forward to the net.

His trainer...

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