Like Father, Not Like Son

When Roger Federer and his wife Mirka’s first set of twins were born in 2009, it was hard not to fantasize about their endless tennis potential (Mirka, who met Roger at the 2000 Sydney Oympics, also played tennis for Switzerland). The same goes for power couple Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, who have two children, and for any iconic sports professionals’ offspring. Maybe we do this because we don’t want to let go of these players’ legacies, or maybe it’s simply just fun to imagine. Maybe we want to believe that our idol’s love of the game was so strong that they had to pass it down to their children.

And sometimes, when the children don’t emulate their parents’ success, we want an explanation.

Take Mats Wilander. The Swedish tennis superstar has won seven Grand Slam singles titles, was ranked No. 1 in the world and is inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. At age 17, he shocked the world at the 1982 French Open by becoming the youngest-ever Grand Slam champion (at the time). Mats had a lot of success at an early age; by age 20, he had won four Grand Slam singles titles.

Mats would have four children with his wife Sonya: Emma, Karl, Erik and Oskar. Surely at least one would follow in his footsteps, right?  Surprisingly, no. "He never forced [tennis] on any of us," says Mats’ second oldest child, Karl, currently a senior at Tufts University. "He was always a very mellow parent and just wanted us to be happy."

In fact, when Karl decided to take up tennis a bit more seriously, Mats made sure not to make him feel pressured and would only give him coaching advice or hit with him when Karl asked him to do so. It was imparting the value of education that Mats was more focused on—something he wished he had more of, as he explained in a 1995 interview with **TENNIS Magazine:

“Just the other night my wife and I were watching TV, and when the stock market quotations came up, I said I wish I knew how the whole system worked. It’s not that I’m very interested in the stock market as such, or in financial things in general, but it’s probably something I should understand…I know nothing about it. It’s a little strange.”

Karl says that he’s never grown up with anything different, so he never really thought much about the fact that his father is, well, Mats Wilander. "The coolest thing for me was definitely seeing some of his old matches that we have on DVD because then I feel like, ‘wow, he’s on ESPN,’” he says, "but besides that, I grew up with all of his stories just like any other kid."

One thing Karl does seems to take after his father is his mellowness. Many children would jump at the fact to tell the world who their famous parent is, but not Karl. “I was never reluctant to talk about him, but I never brought him up, either. I generally just followed his lead, and he tried to go under the radar most of the time,” he explains.

In the same 1995 interview, we get a sense of Mats’ playing personality. When asked if he was able to express his creativity in tennis, Mats responded:

“I think I did express it in tennis, although it wasn’t very obvious—at least not compared to, say, [John] McEnroe. He was like the guy who takes a whole can of paint and throws it against the canvas and it turns out to be a work of art. I was more like, a stroke here, a stroke there, one color in this corner, another one there…As a player, I also was playing more with my mind than my limbs. I don’t know if that was artistic, but I think that was my talent.”

When he was eight, Karl came to the realization of the athletic sensation his father was when he coached the Swedish Davis Cup team. “He’s sort of like John McEnroe in Sweden so everyone on the street was asking him for autographs,” says Karl. But other than that experience, Karl says that he never began to get questions about his father until he was around 14 and playing Sectionals. Then his opponents' parents would tell them just exactly who they were playing.

It remains to be seen if the pro doubles circuits will be someday by dominated by Charlene and Myla Federer, or second set of Federer twins, Leo and Lenny. But it's more likely that they will inherit what Karl did from his father: A love for the game, and an opportunity to become an accomplished player on their own terms. Karl played two years of tennis at Tufts, all while getting the formal education his father missed out on.

"I don’t think any of us feel pressured to be as successful as he either because we are all either in college or planning to go," Karl says. "And he never graduated high school, so he thinks that’s pretty cool."

Catherine Worley played tennis at Tufts University and will be a senior this fall.