Already 100 Satellites

After a difficult time to convince the national associations they could be a good idea, Satellites were introduced by FISTF in 2003. Finally, after six years, it's very positive to see that 100 Satellites have been played. As a reminder, Satellites are tournaments open for the players who are not in the Top 100 of the Open category. For the other categories, only the top 20 players (or teams) in the world rankings are not allowed to play.
So the 100th Satellite took place this week-end in Singapore and Yusni Den Mulia (240th in the Open ranking) is now in the history of FISTF as the winner of this special event. Den Mulia is one of the 3 players who won more than 2 Satellites. Giorgos Tsombanidis (Greece) won 4 titles while Antoine Dikaios (Belgium) and Yusni Den Mulia (Singapore) won 3 times. Satellites have been organised in 17 countries and Belgium organized the largest number of Satellites (14) while Greece hosted 12, Portugal 11, Italy & England 10,... Players from 20 countries won Satellites. Belgium & Greece won 12, Portugal & Italy 10, Malta & England 7,... We can really consider Satellites as important events in the FISTF circuit and hopefully the "smaller" tournaments like Challengers and Futures will also become more important in the future.