The Aegon Championships has been voted the best tournament in its ranking class on the ATP circuit for the fourth successive year.
Having won the prize for the best ATP 250 tournament in 2013 and 2014, the event expanded with immediate success to become the best ATP 500 event in its first year at that level. It has now repeated the feat.
Celebrating the news, tournament director Stephen Farrow said: "Any time a tournament is voted for by the players as the best in its category is something to celebrate, but this year it is particularly satisfying.
"The weather in 2016 posed a number of challenges for us, and it is a huge credit to everyone involved in the tournament that we were still able produce an event that the players felt inclined to recognise in this way. We look forward to running an even better tournament in 2017 with more people able to watch the action than ever before."
Offering outstanding facilities and highly-acclaimed grass playing surfaces, the event has proved a great warm-up for Wimbledon down the years, and in 2016 it actually produced the same winner and finalist - Andy Murray and Milos Raonic - as the Grand Slam event across London a couple of weeks later.
Indeed, a number of players have followed victory at the Queen's Club with Wimbledon glory, a stellar roll of honour that includes Murray (twice), Rafael Nadal, Lleyton Hewitt, Pete Sampras, Boris Becker, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. Past Queen's Club winners also include Rod Laver, Ilie Nastase, Michael Stich, Stefan Edberg and Marin Cilic.
The standard of tennis has always been high due to the impressive field of players taking part each year, with the new world number one Andy Murray winning the tournament a record five times. The 2016 tournament also featured star names such as Nadal, 2016 US Open winner Stan Wawrinka, Marin Cilic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. In all, the tournament contained more than half the top 20 men in the ATP rankings, as well as featuring a number of British players.
Fans booking corporate hospitality for the 2017 event, which takes place from June 19th-25th, will have plenty to look forward to. Not only will lots of big names be playing, but the atmosphere will be electrified by the expansion of Centre Court. The venue currently holds 6,651 seats, but an extra 2,000 are being added.
The announcement of the expansion in September this year came alongside confirmation that the Lawn Tennis Association had signed a ten-year-deal with the Queen's Club to go on staging the Aegon Championships at the venue. This means that fans can enjoy the tournament in its current west London setting until at least 2026.
While the Aegon Championships won the best tournament award in the ATP 500 class, other winners included the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, which triumphed in the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 Tournament category for the third year in a row. The Stockholm Open and Winston-Salem Open were joint winners in the ATP 250 category.