NO sooner had the dust settled on the 2023 Lexus Ilkley Trophy last month than tournament director Rik Smith was already thinking about the 2024 version.

And having increased the seating capacity on Centre Court from 750 to 1100 this year, and still sold out the last three days, Smith wants to have 1500-1600 seats in place next year for the $125,000 ATP Challenger and $100,000 ITF Women’s World Tour events.

Smith, who is also venue host Ilkley Lawn Tennis & Squash Club’s chairman, said: “The fact that we sold out the last three days shows the potential, and we increased the seating on record numbers last year and I am hoping that we will increase again next year based on the record numbers this year.

“Even on the Wednesday we had numbers far in excess of our Centre Court capacity, but we want to be a bit cautious.

“I would hope that 1500-1600 is a realistic target for next year as we increase incrementally on the basis of the number of people asking for Centre Court tickets this year and the increased publicity around the event.”

Working on the basis that if you stand still, you go backwards, the tournament made several changes for 2023, such as an increased food hall area for the general public and themed days.

Smith confessed: “The majority of the changes that we made worked, such as the increased size of the public food hall area, but like every Challenger we are trying to do things within the constraints of a budget.

“If that was limitless, we would have a lot more covered spectator areas, whether it was sunny or raining, and more covered courts if it did rain (they already have five) which gives you the ability to get matches on but keep the firmness of the grass courts.

“What we have done this year is incremental increases that have delivered a bigger event, and hopefully we will do the same next year.”

After four days of indifferent weather, the Wimbledon warm-up tournament finished with four days of good weather, but Smith admitted: “My stress levels earlier in the week were the highest they have ever been at the Ilkley Trophy.

“The weather conditions that we had at the start of the week were as tough as I have seen here.

“We didn’t have days when we were completely rained off, but the weather that we had was probably more challenging where you had an hour’s play and the covers went on, a couple of hours’ play the covers went on, half an hour’s play the covers went on.

“That intermittent rain for the first few days stressed the whole team, especially our grounds team (led by Will Rigg), and by Tuesday the games were stacking up.

“The grounds team were getting in at 5.30am-6am every day and not leaving until 10pm or 11pm, and that is a serious amount of hours they put in during the week.

“But over and above that we have a huge team here who are doing similar hours, such as 7am-10pm, and it is amazing how an event like this can wrap everybody up and drag everybody with them.

“You can’t help but be enthused by it and want to be part of it and it creates a fantastic team ethos between them.”

Play actually went indoors to try and keep it on schedule, and Smith confessed: “You never want to go indoors at a grass-court tournament, but we were forced to do it.

“We probably played about 10 or 12 matches indoors, but if we hadn’t have done we would have put a lot more stress on the players, and potentially the matches would have been doubled up (semi-finals and finals on the same day), which happened at Birmingham.”

However, the standard of Ilkley LT&SC’s grass courts was again on a par with Wimbledon, and Smith said: “The work that has been done on the grass courts, not just this year but for the last three years, have again showed incremental improvements each year, and hopefully next year will be the same again.

“Maybe the presentation of them can get a bit better but in terms of overall play there wasn’t a bad comment all week from the players or supervisors about the courts.”