CHARLES Broom has qualified for the Lexus Ilkley Trophy for the second successive year.

The 25-year-old from Hertfordshire defeated former Ilkley runner-up Dennis Novak (Austria) in a marathon match on an outside show court yesterday to reach the first-round proper of the $125,000 ATP Challenger.

Broom, who triumphed 7-6, 6-7, 7-6 in 2hr 51min, will now play 2022 quarter-finalist Gijs Brouwer (Netherlands).

But British success at Ilkley was not confined to the men’s singles as 17-year-old Talia Neilson Gatenby and 15-year-old Mingge Xu claimed notable victims.

Neilson Gatenby defeated French seventh seed Alice Robbe 6-7, 6-3, 7-5 in the first round of qualifying for the $100,000 ITF Women’s World Tour event, while Loughborough-based Xu took out 16th seed Antonia Ruzic (Serbia) 6-3, 6-3.

Meanwhile, there was a near miss for 18-year-old Jasmine Conway from Oxford, who lost 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 to sixth seed Carole Monnet (France), almost bridging a ranking gap of 457 places.

Meanwhile, Liverpool’s Sarah Beth Grey leads 10th seed Zeynep Sonmez (Turkey) 6-0, 0-1 in a match that was interrupted by evening rain, while 14-year-old Hannah Klugman, from Surrey, Great Britain’s national 16 & under champion, had just won the second set 7-6 against experienced Dutchwoman Lesley Pattinama Kerkhove having dropped the first set 6-2 when the weather closed in.

However, some of the best tennis of the day came in the only first-round match to be played in the ATP Challenger, with defending champion Zizou Bergs (Belgium) defeating fifth seed Jurij Rodionov (Austria) 7-6, 4-6, 6-1.

Former runner-up Alex Bolt (Australia) is among the six men to have qualified so far, defeating 10th seed Jesper de Jong (Netherlands) 6-3, 7-6.