The tennis season is drawing to a close – but here at Thomas Lyte there’s a familiar buzz of excitement as a long year comes to its on-court conclusion. Far from winding down… we’re just getting started.
Thomas Lyte enjoys an enduring relationship with Tennis, and as autumn turns to winter in the Northern Hemisphere, we take enormous pride in the crucial role we play in the season’s denouement. In fact there will be nine tennis trophies from the Thomas Lyte workshops lifted in the space of just a few months.
In September, the Laver Cup saw some of the best tennis players on the planet converge on Vancouver. Watching on, were team captains and all-time greats, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, and one of the sport’s most easily identifiable pieces of silverware.
Made in honour of the man known as the Rockhampton Rocket, the Rod Laver trophy is a dramatic reflection of his extraordinary career, and the excitement that surrounds the annual tournament named in his honour.
For the modern player, the trophy is a history lesson in itself, with the 200 hand-engraved notches around its rim graphically depicting every single titles won by Laver in an extraordinary 22-year career which bridged both the amateur and professional era.
Currently underway in Guadalajara, the WTA Finals represent the finale to the women’s WTA season, bringing together the top eight players in the world. Thomas Lyte is continually honoured to be associated with a tournament that celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022, with the winners of the competition lifting a beautiful silver trophy that has graced the our London workshops.
Thomas Lyte are honoured to continue to provide the replica trophies that are given by the WTA, to the champions, to keep.
The trophy itself is named after Billie-Jean King and celebrates the impact of a woman who remains one of the most influential figures in the history of the sport. The singles and doubles tournament trophy has some of tennis’s most iconic names engraved on its plinth, including Serena Williams, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Monica Seles.
As the Northern Hemisphere braces itself for winter, the Billie-Jean King Cup will bring some much-needed sunshine as it celebrates its 60th anniversary in Seville. Launched as the Federation Cup – and changing its name to the Fed Cup in 1995 – the tournament assumed its current name in 2020, with the former American tennis pioneer having the trophy renamed in her honour.
The 2023 event will bring together 12 teams from across the world, made up of the two finalists in 2022, one host or wildcard and nine qualifiers. At Thomas Lyte, we’ll be watching on, waiting for the trophy, that visits our workshops for regular maintenance and restoration, to be hoisted aloft by the winner at the conclusion of this six-day celebration of women’s tennis.
Thomas Lyte also provide the International Tennis Federation (ITF) with mini-replicas for presentation to each of the winning team members.
Another highlight during this busy period of tennis is the Nitto ATP Finals, which will once again be held in their new home of Turin in the second week of November.
This event is as storied as any in the sport. Formerly known as the Masters Grand Prix, the first tournament took place in 1970 and ran alongside the WCT Finals, which signaled the end of the then World Championship Tennis season.
The Nitto ATP Finals of today is a very different event to the original – and one in which Thomas Lyte has played an increasingly important role in in recent years. In many ways, the end-of-season showpiece is a celebration of Thomas Lyte’s association with the ATP, after the company was named as the official trophy supplier to the end-of-year event in November 2021.
As well as the Nitto ATP Finals Singles Trophy – which pits the world’s top-ranked players against each other in two groups of four before a semi-final and final – Thomas Lyte is also proud to have designed and made the equivalent prize in the doubles competition, which runs concurrently with the singles tournament.
Both the Nitto ATP Finals doubles and singles trophies were designed to have eight sides, to reflect the eight doubles partnerships and eight singles players who qualify to enter the tournaments based on their ATP rankings.
Our London fine silver workshops are also the original home of the ATP World No.1 Singles Trophy and the ATP World No. 1 Doubles Trophy, which celebrate the players and pairings who have finished the year at the head of the global men’s rankings. Both of these trophies are presented to the respective winners during the course of the week-long event.
Collectively, the ATP trophies are four of the most prestigious prizes in the sport and jewels in the global tennis crown. This year’s tournament will be the third held in Northern Italy as the tournament establishes itself in a new home after being hosted at London’s O2 for 12 years.
It may be one of the oldest tournaments in tennis, but the Davis Cup still maintains a timeless appeal – 123 years after it was first introduced. This year’s competition, which will take place in Malaga, will feature 16 teams, including the two finalists from 2022, two wild card teams, and 12 qualifiers.
Thomas Lyte are the proud restorers of a trophy which is every bit as impressive as the tennis played by the finalists. Originally made for a price of £700, this piece of sporting history is made from 217 ounces of silver and stands an impressive 13 inches high and 18 inches wide. It sits on a three-tiered plinth, making it one of the most distinctive pieces of silverware in global sport, and hard to miss when the trophy and plinth both visit our London workshops for restoration and engraving.
This tournament will begin before the clocks have struck midnight on New Year’s Eve but will stretch into 2024 – opening another breathless 12 months for the world’s best tennis players.
Whether it’s the first event of the 2024 season or the last of 2023 is a moot point. But with the players vying for another Thomas Lyte-made trophy, it’s a further celebration of our close relationship with a sport that continues to thrill, year after year.
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