The ITF World Tennis Tour delivered a standout season, with over 10,000 players in action across 1059 tournaments as competitive opportunities significantly increased across the Tour in 2022.

A total of 533 women’s and 526 men’s tournaments were held through the year on the ITF World Tennis Tour (up from 386 men’s and 373 women’s events in 2021) with 65 different countries playing host to a total of 47,016* main draw matches – including 32,658* in singles and 14,358* in doubles.

The women’s Tour continued to prove a particularly strong driver of rising talent, thanks largely to the increased number of events held at the W60-W80-W100 levels that help to deliver the best players to the WTA Tour, including 75 W60, seven W80 and 14 W100 tournaments. By contrast, there were 31 W60, eight W80 and six W100 tournaments in 2021.

Eighteen players recorded multiple tournament victories across the Tour’s highest-level, with American Taylor Townsend taking centre stage as the only player to collect titles at both a W100 and a W80 event.

The former world No. 61 claimed her first professional singles title in three years at W100 Charleston in May – just her third competitive tournament since the birth of her first child 14 months earlier – before reigning supreme at W80 Tyler in October.

An honourable mention goes to Zhu Lin, Wang Xinyu and Linda Noskova, who all achieved a W100-W60 title double during the season. Noskova proved particularly impressive, becoming just the sixth player in the last 15 years to win a W100 title while aged 17 or under with her victory at W100 Versmold, which came a month after she became the youngest Roland Garros qualifier in 13 years in Paris.

Teenagers more than made their mark in 2022, with fifteen-year-old Brenda Fruhvirtova topping the list for the most titles on the women’s ITF World Tennis Tour with eight, capping an incredible season which saw her climb 966 places in the WTA rankings to a career-high No. 128 in late November.

The Czech prodigy also put together a remarkable 27-match winning streak between June and October, outstripping the 18-successive wins achieved by American Asia Muhammad and Argentine Solana Sierra.

Bu Yunchaokete and Dane Sweeny shared the honours on the men’s side, each claiming a Tour-leading six titles, while Vietnam’s Ly Nam Hoang put together the longest men’s winning streak, reeling off 24 consecutive match-wins.  

China’s Sijia Wei compiled the most match-wins on the women’s Tour with 64 – with her six W15 titles in Monastir putting the 19-year-old in sight of the WTA’s Top 400 by the year’s end - though Greece's Sapfo Sakellaridi was hot on her heels, winning 63 of the 103 matches she contested in 2022.

France’s Terence Atmane and Tunisia’s Skander Mansouri emulated the women’s leader with 64 match-wins, with 20-year-old Atmane collecting his first four ITF singles titles to end the year inside the ATP’s Top 300, and Mansouri continuing his dominance on home soil. The 27-year-old Tunisian added five more titles in Monastir to his collection, having secured 13 of his 15 career ITF singles titles in the city.

Emerging young stars Joelle Lilly Sophie Steur, of Germany, and Lola Radivojevic, of Serbia, were among the biggest climbers in the WTA rankings this year, climbing a huge 1,047 and 1,012 places, respectively.

Seventeen-year-old Radivojevic, who won three W15 titles en route to finishing the year at No. 348, made the biggest ranking leap into the WTA’s Top 400, closely followed by Fruhvirtova (+966), while there were also substantial jumps for emerging talents Petra Marcinko (+738), Sonay Kartal (+658), Lucie Havlickova (+647) and Priska Nugroho (+612).

Leo Borg, son of Swedish tennis legend Bjorn, made the biggest leap on the men’s side – catapulting 1,708 places to a career-high No. 506 after a year in which he collected his first professional singles title at M15 Sharm El Sheikh.

Meanwhile, Wu Yibing made the biggest jump into the men’s Top 400, putting an injury-hit spell behind him to climb 1,006 places in the ATP rankings. A season that began with his first title in five years at M15 Orange Park ended with the Chinese player having accumulated three ATP Challenger Tour titles and sitting just 16 spots off the Top 100.

Austria’s Neil Oberleitner (11 titles), Portugal’s Francisca Jorge (10) and China’s Sijia Wei (10) were the star performers in doubles, all attaining double figures for team titles won in 2022. 

Oberleitner won 11 men’s doubles titles with seven different partners to rocket 254 places to a career-high No. 162 in the ATP doubles rankings by the year’s end, while Jorge (three partners) and Wei (four partners) each won 10 women’s doubles titles, climbing to No. 135 and No. 279 in the WTA doubles rankings, respectively.

The new season – which will include a new W40 tournament category on the women’s side to help bridge the gap between the Tour’s entry-level and higher-level tournaments - will see a fresh crop of elite juniors join those already looking to make their mark on the ITF World Tennis Tour in 2023.

Discover more about the 2023 calendar – which is set to include a record $16.5million in prize money – here

(*Figures accurate as at 18 December 2022)