Jonah Barrington
Sarah Fitz-Gerald
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Sarah Fitz-Gerald leads 2 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Jonah Barrington at #9 and Sarah Fitz-Gerald at #11.
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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 Sarah Fitz-Gerald
Five World Open titles — in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2002 — put Fitz-Gerald behind only Nicol David and Nour El Sherbini in the history of the women's world championship, and she added a British Open crown to go with them. Her career divides in two: three straight world titles in the late 1990s, then a serious knee injury and a comeback that produced two more at an age when most players of the period had retired. She reached world number one in 1996 and returned to it after the injury, a rare double ascent. Fitz-Gerald was known for a compact, low-error game and exceptional composure in deciding games, and she was central to Australia's dominance of the World Team Championship through the 1990s. She later moved into coaching and administration and served on the World Squash Federation's board during the sport's Olympic campaign.