Jonah Barrington
Michelle Martin
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Michelle Martin leads 2 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Jonah Barrington at #9 and Michelle Martin at #10.
The case for Jonah Barrington
The least naturally gifted player on this list and one of the most influential. Barrington came to serious squash in his twenties, having been expelled from university, and concluded that he could not out-hit the Pakistanis so he would out-train the entire sport. The regime he built — road running, weights, court sprints, brutal solo drilling — had no precedent in any racket sport and effectively invented modern squash conditioning. He won six British Opens between 1967 and 1973, at a time when that title was the world championship, and represented both Ireland and Great Britain. His impact off court was larger still: articulate, evangelical and made for television, he turned squash into a mass participation boom in Britain through the 1970s, when hundreds of new courts were built to meet demand. Every player who now treats fitness as the primary competitive weapon, from Jansher Khan to Paul Coll, is working inside the template he set.
The case for Michelle Martin
The most decorated member of the most remarkable family in squash. Martin won three consecutive World Opens in 1993, 1994 and 1995 and six consecutive British Opens from 1993 to 1998, nine majors in six years of near-total control of the women's game between the Devoy and Fitz-Gerald eras. Her brothers were both world-class professionals: Rodney Martin won the 1991 World Open in Adelaide by beating Jahangir Khan in the semifinal and Jansher Khan in the final, the only man to defeat both at their peak in a single tournament, while Brett Martin also reached the world top five. Michelle's game was orthodox, powerful and relentlessly accurate, built on Australian coaching orthodoxy of hard length and early volleying, and she led Australia to repeated World Team Championship success. She is a rare case of a player whose peak was total but whose reputation has faded simply because it sat between two more famous eras.