(This article was first published on 16 June 2022)

Ilkley might be better known as a ‘la-di-da spa town’ (as one British news outlet once put it) than a hub of international tennis, but it may just be one of the sport’s best kept secrets.

The LTA’s Ilkley Trophy has been host to a W100 ITF World Tennis Tour tournament for the past six years, providing a key stop in the British summer grass court season and a launchpad for up-and-coming players to spring on to further success at Wimbledon and beyond.

The fact that it is staged in a picture-perfect West-Yorkshire town is an added bonus.

“It just encapsulates grass court tennis at its best,” says club chairman and tournament director, Rik Smith. “We’ve got the venue, the scenery, the blue canvas is up, the stands, the crowd… the place just looks great.

“We call it the Wimbledon of the North.”

It is not just the aesthetics that make the tournament a prized asset, however much they might help. W100 Ilkley - along with the 17 other W100 events currently scheduled on the ITF World Tennis Tour in 2023 - provides opportunity for rising stars who are on the periphery of the WTA Tour, and has played its part in helping numerous players progress from the ITF World Tennis Tour to bigger and better things.

The likes of Olympic champion Belinda Bencic and current world No. 4 Ons Jabeur have graced the Ilkley grass, while the tournament’s first staging as a W100-level event in 2017 saw Magdalena Rybarikova crowned champion, before the Slovak went on to reach the Wimbledon semi-finals a few weeks later. Within a year, she had cracked the world’s Top 20.

Bianca Andreescu was also a repeat visitor to Ilkley, competing there in 2017 and 2018 before her breakout year in 2019 when she won her first Grand Slam title at the US Open.

Those are examples of the quality and potential of players on display at ITF W100 events like this, and Smith is acutely aware of the power and importance of tournaments at this level.

"To have the kids watching all the female players is hugely aspirational for them"

“This type of event is aspirational,” he said. “Events like Wimbledon really pop tennis on the map, but actually even when you go there, a lot of the tennis is quite remote and removed from where you're watching it.

“But here, we have a huge focus on getting the kids out of school, coming down, trying out tennis, watching tennis. We make it free after school, so all the kids come down and watch. To have those kids watching all the female players is hugely aspirational for them. Ultimately, that feeds into what we see in this level of tournament, which is a lot of emerging players on the women’s tour.”

Tournaments of this ilk are no mean feat to organise. Planning for the eight-day event begins up to nine months in advance, and Smith estimates that the competition requires between 250-320 people a day to facilitate - “It’s a phenomenal undertaking for a club of our size,” he admitted.

It’s worth the hard work. As well as helping to develop emerging British talent on a local level, the tournament is a crucial and successful example of the ITF World Tennis Tour’s fundamental purpose: to deliver the best players to the Tours and beyond. For Smith, the Ilkley event has an opportunity to go even further, and by making the event as good as it can possibly be outside of the on-court action, they can appeal to the casual eventer as much as the tennis fan.

“Making sure that there are feeder tournaments into the WTA and then obviously into the Grand Slams is hugely important for tennis,” he said. “This event does bridge the gap brilliantly between a lot of the lesser tournaments. I think every other tournament looking to do it should try to do the same thing we have – try and elevate it and think about the event itself.

“We put on a real spectacle in terms of what we do outside of the tournament to make it have a bigger feel than it perhaps should at [W100] level.”

That effort has been rewarded when it comes to fan attendance. In 2022, 1,200 fans were on site during qualifying alone at the Ilkley event (which also features an ATP Challenger) and the final three days of the tournament sold out well in advance.

Smith is confident that they could have doubled the size of their 850-capacity Centre Court and still filled it, such is the appetite for sport in the local area.

“Making sure that there are feeder tournaments into the WTA and then obviously into the Grand Slams is hugely important for tennis"

“To be able to have an event here that elevates the status of tennis in the North of England is hugely important,” he said. “Yorkshire is known as a very sporting county, so we get a lot of buy-in from the region, and since the Manchester Trophy isn’t taking place this year we are the biggest tennis tournament in the North of England.”

That status is, of course, hugely beneficial in terms of the reach and organisation of the event but, for the more inexperienced players taking part, it also provides valuable experience of what to expect at the top of the game.

“I think the players here really benefit from seeing the crowds,” Smith said. “A lot of the players will have played in front of a minimal number of people week in, week out, but they come to an event like this and suddenly they're playing in front of 800 people, and you have a Centre Court where there's a real atmosphere.

“That can only help them progress into sort of the bigger tournaments and get them prepared for those bigger tournaments going forward.”

You can watch the live stream of W100 Ilkley here or follow the latest scores on the ITF World Tennis Tour live scores platform

(This article was first published on 16 June 2022)