Nicol David
Jonah Barrington
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Nicol David leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Nicol David at #4 and Jonah Barrington at #9.
The case for Nicol David
The most dominant player of squash's fully professional era and the reason the sport has a mass audience in Southeast Asia. David held the women's world number one ranking for 112 consecutive months, from August 2006 to September 2015, the longest unbroken reign at the top in squash history for either sex. She won a record eight World Championships between 2005 and 2014 and five British Opens, thirteen majors in all, and added Commonwealth Games singles gold in 2010 and 2014 along with a long run of Asian titles. Her game was built on relentless retrieval, immaculate length and a movement style so efficient that opponents complained she never looked hurried. She was the first Asian player of either sex to top the world rankings, was voted world player of the year repeatedly, and retired in 2019 as Malaysia's most decorated athlete in any sport.
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.