The news of the week (12)

Hello everyone, here are the news of the week.

Some news from South Africa - Friday evening will see the first WASPA tournament on African soil and Clifford Graaff is hoping for a good turnout. Plans are discussed to hold a series of these tournaments every three months - so it will be 4 tournaments for the year and then have a series winner. As per the SATFA statutes there will also be holding the national champs towards the end of the year - this is the highest seeded tournament.

More about the Yokohama tournament - Massimo Conturso's excellent SC Connecticut website gave a some more details about Andrea Gasparini's win in Yokohama. The presence of a dozen of spectators (men and women), who cheered for the home players until the very end, enriched the well organized, 3 hours long tournament. The local club was particularly gracious and
offered a snack of pizza and Japanese specialties half way the event, as well as an after-tournament dinner. The competition saw a clear supremacy of the Italian expats, Andrea Gasparini (USA) and Hong Kong's Antonio Carabillo. Andrea & Antonio shared points in their scoreless match and the first place position. However, Andrea claimed the final victory thanks to a better goal differential. What better way to celebrate his 37th birthday! Andrea Gasparini had also won the FISTF Grand Prix of Argentina last season and played the FISTF World Cup in Palermo in July.

News from Malta - The "TAZZA INDIPENDENZA" of September 18 will be another great tournament as 16 players are already registered to play.

Results, rankings and statistics - The updated "golden book" is available from the "Download Section" (right column). The file reveals the new ranking and there are already 59 players ranked in the table of august. The points of the Yokohama tournament will be added in the ranking of september.

Forthcoming events - Here is a list of the forthcoming WASPA tournaments. We hope many more will be added in the near future.
- September 9 - Tournament in Johannesburg (South Africa)
- September 18 - Tournament in Attard (Malta)
- September 27 - Tournament in Templeuve (Belgium) - date to be confirmed
- October 1 - Tournament in Sylvania (Australia)
- October 8 - Tournament in Stockholm (Sweden)

Top 10 nations this week on the blog - This week the bigger number of visitors were from the US, the UK, Malta, Germany, Finland, Greece, Belgium, Singapore, Italy and Portugal. Among the "exotic" countries, we also had visitors from Indonesia, Chile and Burkina Faso!

Keep on flicking,
Vincent