Lennart Bergelin

Born on June 10, 1925, Lennart Bergelin was a Swedish tennis player and coach who rose to fame with his work with Björn Borg. As a tennis player, Bergelin won nine Swedish championships in singles between 1945 and 1955. He also won the French Open doubles titles in 1948. He also served as the captain when Sweden captured its first Davis Cup title.

Bergelin trained Björn Borg between 1971 and 1983, helping Borg win in 11 Grand Slam tournaments.

The Swedish player was known as one of the top amateur players in the world between 1946 and 1955, wining 20 national championships and was one of the first Swedish tennis players to win a Grand Slam when he and partner Jaroslav Drobný won the French doubles championship in 1948. In 1950, he was given the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal.

He also represented Sweden in 89 Davis Cup matches, winning 63 of these matches. Bergelin played his last game with Jan-Erik Lundqvist at the DC game, when he was forty years old. He also captained the Swedish team between 1971 and 1976. In 1975, he lead the Swedish team to victory against Czechoslovakia for the Davis Cup title, but started to turn down the captain position from 1976 onwards, focusing his energies on exclusively training Borg.

Known as the coach who simply wanted to get the best out of his players, Bergelin was known to have cautioned other coaches to not change Borg’s rough playing style, saying, “It's difficult to tamper with success.”

He died in 2008 at the age of 83 of a heart attack in a Stockholm hospital.