Born in Växjö, Mats Wilander married and still lives with the model of South African origin Sonya Mulholland, with whom he had five children: Emma, Karl, Erik, Oskar and Travis. The family resides in Hailey, Idaho on an eighty-one acre estate. Son Erik suffers from a rare skin disease called epidermolysis bullosa; for this reason Mats and his wife are active in raising funds for research against this disease.

Winner of 7 Grand Slam tournaments in singles and 1 in doubles, in 1988 he closed the season as number one in the world.

Wilander was the captain of the Swedish Davis Cup team from 2003 to February 2010, leaving his position a few days before the match against Argentina valid for the first round of the World Group. With him Sweden reached the semi-finals in 2007 and the quarter-finals in 2003, 2004 and 2008 and were never relegated from the World Group.

Today Wilander is also known as a good coach: he followed, among others, Marat Safin and Wayne Ferreira. He then took care of two Frenchmen, Paul-Henri Mathieu and Tatiana Golovin. Under his guidance, Mathieu reached 12th place in the world rankings in April 2008. Their partnership ended in September 2008.

He occasionally comments on tennis matches for the Eurosport television network.