New Dates, New Sponsor, Same World Class Tennis
A capacity crowd of nearly 600 watched Viktorija Golubic, the top seed, win the W100 Shrewsbury tournament at The Shrewsbury Club last October. Picture: Richard Dawson Photography.
We highly recommend you save the dates of October 13th - 20th in your diary!
The biggest women’s tennis tournament in the UK outside of the grass court season is confirmed to be returning to Shropshire that week with the dates now released for the newly titled Lexus W100 Shrewsbury, part of the ITF World Tennis Tour. We are delighted to have been chosen once again by the International Tennis Federation and Lawn Tennis Association to stage this prestigious event which means local tennis fans can again look forward to watching leading British and international stars competing on our indoor courts at The Shrewsbury Club.
Our ITF tennis tournaments have previously been sponsored by Budgen, the Shropshire car dealership. However, this October’s event will be known as the Lexus W100 Shrewsbury under the terms of a partnership between the LTA and Lexus.
Dave Courteen, The Shrewsbury Club’s managing director, said: "We are really excited that the tournament is coming back once again.
“It's fantastic for the town and the county that the LTA and ITF want to continue to bring an event of this stature to what is a relatively small town compared to others that host this level of event on the worldwide tennis circuit. We have had fantastic support from Budgen over the last eight years,” added Dave. "We hope the tennis tournaments have also helped to further raise their profile over that time.
"We have had brilliant backing from Budgen and hope to continue our relationship with the company, which is really important to us. We now look forward to working with Lexus and the LTA in making October’s tournament even bigger and better, which is what we always strive to do every year.”
Top seed Viktorija Golubic from Switzerland was the winner of last October's W100 event, following in the footsteps of current Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova 12 months earlier. Record crowds enjoyed the chance to watch world-class tennis, while a host of hospitality events throughout the week also proved extremely popular.
Dave added: "The LTA is delighted with the support this event gets, so it was all very positive feedback. Ticket sales were up about 60 per cent on the previous year. We increased the capacity and had more seats available. The DMOS People Arena was sold out for Finals Day and it was the biggest crowd we’ve ever had, so it was wonderful to see so many people here. The support proves there is a real demand in Shropshire from people wanting to watch high-quality tennis. The players also really enjoyed playing here. Those that are used to playing at a higher level, at Grand Slams, like Viktorija Golubic, were hugely complimentary about how the event was staged."
The Shrewsbury tournament is part of the LTA’s Performance Competitions Calendar.
It’s designed to provide British players with the chance to develop on home soil through more meaningful playing opportunities, giving all players the widest possible number of competitive matches on the ITF World Tennis Tour.