TOP-CLASS tennis is returning to Ilkley Lawn Tennis & Squash Club this summer.

The pre-Wimbledon Ilkley Trophy tournament, which hasn’t been held since 2019, has been confirmed for June 12-19.

The men will be competing in a $125,000 ATP Challenger tournament and the women in a $100,000 Women’s World Tour event.

The Ilkley Trophy was not held in 2020 due to the pandemic and was moved to the Midlands last year, being renamed the Nottingham Trophy, due to the lack of a bio-secure bubble in Ilkley.

The Ilkley Trophy was first held in 2015, so this year will be the sixth staging of what is a popular grass-court tournament in the week immediately before the Wimbledon qualifying event is held at Roehampton and two weeks before the start of Wimbledon itself.

Previous men’s champions at the Ilkley Trophy have been Denis Kudla (USA, 2015), Yen Hsun-Lu (Chinese Taipei, 2016), Marton Fucsovics (Hungary, 2017), Sergiy Stakhovsky (Ukraine, 2018) and Dominik Koepfer (Germany, 2019).

Women’s winners have been Anna-Lena Friedsam (Germany, 2015), Evgeniya Rodina (Russia, 2016), Magdalena Rybarikova (Slovakia, 2017), Tereza Smitkova (Czech Republic, 2018) and Monica Nicolescu (Romania, 2019).

Winners of both singles events have historically been awarded wild cards into the singles at Wimbledon if their rankings were not high enough to grant them direct entry.

Rybarikova famously went on to reach the semi-finals of the women’s singles at Wimbledon, three weeks after winning at Ilkley.

Tickets for the Ilkley Trophy can be purchased at https://tickets.lta.org.uk

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that Ilkley LT&SC will stage a Tier Two British Tour event from Monday, July 25 to Saturday July 30.

The LTA has also announced the dates of Ilkley’s sister tournament, the Surbiton Trophy, which also holds a $125,000 men’s Challenger and $100,000 Women’s World Tour event on May 29-June 5.

However, there will no longer be a Manchester Trophy event due to limitations at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club.

After Wimbledon, $25,000 men’s grass-court events will be staged at the National Tennis Centre at Roehampton (one week) and Nottingham (two weeks).

There will be $25,000 women’s hard-court events on those same three weeks at Roehampton, Nottingham and Foxhills, with combined men’s and women’s hard-court events ($25,000 each) on August 15 and 22 at Aldershot and Roehampton.

The LTA have also announced that there will be a $100,000 women’s only event in October at Shrewsbury.