ANY plans to upgrade the Lexus Ilkley Trophy in terms of prize-money or status, are, admits tournament director Rik Smith “beyond Ilkley’s control”.

The tournament, scheduled to be held at Ilkley Lawn Tennis & Squash Club from June 15-22 this summer, has quickly established itself due to its infrastructure, court quality and general ambience to be one of the better stops on tennis’ second tier of tournaments.

However, upgrading, for example to become the lowest tier on the main ATP Tour or a $125,000 stop on the WTA Tour, is a debate to be had by the ATP, WTA and ITF rather than Smith, who is also Ilkley Lawn Tennis & Squash Club’s chairman.

The prize-money for the 2023 version was 145,000 euros for the men, including free accommodation, as part of the ATP Challenger Tour, and $100,000 for the women, also including hospitality, as part of the ITF Women’s World Tour.

The Ilkley Trophy was first held in 2015, but missed out for two years (2020 and 2021) due to the pandemic, with the 2021 tournament being switched to Nottingham where there already a bio-secure bubble that was not available in Ilkley.

The Ilkley Trophy - now the biggest in the north of England - resumed in 2022.

Smith said: “There is $250,000 on offer in prize-money overall, and in the past couple of years we have really re-established the event and people know what we are about and they can see the size and the scale of where we want to take it to, but in terms of going up a level there are lots of different factors that come into that and they are beyond Ilkley’s control.

“All that we want to do at Ilkley is put on the best tennis event, the best tournament that we possibly can, and potentially that is what we should be doing in terms of promoting regional tennis and tennis in the UK.

“If then the ATP, WTA or ITF reckon that this is a good venue for having a higher-ranked tournament then they will maybe look at that, but that is out of our control.”

Just about all of the things about the Ilkley Trophy are positive, but what emerged during the tournament last year was that wild cards into Wimbledon were not being offered to the singles winners if their world ranking did not guarantee them automatic entry.

For example, Sweden’s Mirjam Bjorklund won the women’s singles at the Ilkley Trophy, but then had to head for the Wimbledon qualifying at Roehampton, where she lost in the first round 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 to Switzerland’s Viktorija Golubic.

Smith said: “The wild cards for Wimbledon are dictated by the All England Club, and clearly we would want there to be a wild card for our singles winners should they not be able to get in automatically via their ranking, which increases the stature of our tournament for the players.

“In the past our winners have got wild cards into Wimbledon, and we would hope that something like that will be done, but the problem last year was the number of British players who needed wild cards into Wimbledon.

“We would hope that players who got into the semi-finals or finals or won it would be considered for wild cards.”