🎾Competitions

Squash's world title, launched as the World Open in 1976 with Geoff Hunt and Heather McKay as the first champions. Jansher Khan's eight men's titles and Nicol David's eight women's titles are the records. The event moves between hosts — Chicago, Cairo, Doha and Manchester have all staged recent editions — and now offers equal prize money to men and women. Winning it is the single achievement by which squash careers are measured, and the trophy has been shared by Pakistani, Australian, English, French, Malaysian and, overwhelmingly in recent years, Egyptian players.

Known as the Wimbledon of squash and older than the world championship it now sits alongside. The women's event began in 1922, eight years before the men's, and was won sixteen consecutive times by Heather McKay; Jahangir Khan won the men's title ten times in a row from 1982. For the fifty years before the first World Open, the British Open was the sport's de facto world championship, which is why historical greatness in squash is still counted in British Opens as much as world titles.

The most striking venue in the sport: a portable all-glass court erected in Vanderbilt Hall inside Grand Central Terminal, where it has been staged since the mid-1990s, with commuters stopping to watch through the glass. The tournament dates back to 1930 in various forms and is now one of the PSA's highest-tier events for both men and women. Its combination of a landmark setting and free public viewing has made it squash's most effective advertisement in the United States, a country the sport has spent decades trying to grow.

First contested in 1954 in the North American hardball code and reborn as an international softball event, the US Open has been staged in Philadelphia at Drexel University since 2013 and ranks among the richest tournaments on the tour. It was one of the first major events to offer equal prize money to men and women. Its move to a permanent home with a purpose-built all-glass show court gave American squash a flagship it had lacked, and it now anchors a US season that also includes strong collegiate and junior circuits.

Staged on a glass court erected on the Giza plateau directly beneath the Great Pyramid, this is the most photographed event in squash and the clearest symbol of Egypt's control of the modern game. Egypt had hosted showpiece squash at the Pyramids before — the 1999 World Open final between Peter Nicol and Ahmed Barada was played there — but the annual Platinum-tier event dates from the early 2020s. Home players have dominated it, which is unsurprising given that Egyptians routinely hold half or more of both world top tens.

The men's team championship began in 1967 and the women's in 1979, both now contested biennially with national squads of three or four players and results decided across a series of individual matches. Australia and Pakistan dominated the men's event for decades before Egypt and England took over; Australia and England were the historic women's powers, with Egypt now ascendant. For federations outside the sport's elite, the team event is often the most realistic route to a medal and the main justification for government funding.

Squash entered the Commonwealth Games at Kuala Lumpur in 1998, with Scotland's Peter Nicol winning the first men's singles gold, and it has been on every programme since. For thirty years, while squash was repeatedly rejected by the IOC, the Commonwealth Games provided its only multi-sport stage and its only route to the state funding that follows medals. Nicol David of Malaysia and Nick Matthew of England both won multiple golds, and the singles and doubles events remain a genuine target for Commonwealth nations outside the tour's top tier.

The season-ending event for the highest-ranked men and women, played in a group stage followed by knockout semifinals — an unusual format in a sport that is otherwise almost entirely straight knockout. Recent editions have been staged in Egypt, including on the glass court at the Pyramids. Its limited eight-player fields make it the hardest tournament in squash to qualify for, and the group format guarantees the top players multiple meetings, which is why it produces some of the most competitive matches of the calendar.