Susan Devoy
Nour El Sherbini
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Susan Devoy at #7 and Nour El Sherbini at #8.
The case for Susan Devoy
The player who held the women's game together between Heather McKay and the Australians, and one of the shortest, most concentrated great careers in the sport. Devoy won eight British Opens between 1984 and 1992, seven of them consecutively, and four World Opens in 1985, 1987, 1990 and 1992 — twelve majors in barely a decade. She was world number one for almost the entire stretch from 1984 to her retirement, which came at 28, immediately after winning both the British Open and the World Open in the same year, a departure at the absolute summit that is almost unheard of in professional sport. Her game was aggressive by the standards of the period, built on early volleying and a willingness to attack the front court rather than grind. She was later made a Dame and served as New Zealand's Race Relations Commissioner, and remains the country's most successful racket-sport athlete.
The case for Nour El Sherbini
The defining player of the Egyptian age and the youngest women's world champion in history, winning her first World Championship in 2016 at 20 after reaching the final at just 16 in 2012 — the youngest finalist ever. By the 2024-25 season she had assembled seven world titles, behind only Nicol David's record eight, plus multiple British Opens and long spells at world number one that have traded back and forth with her compatriots Raneem El Welily, Nouran Gohar and Hania El Hammamy. Her squash is the clearest statement of the modern Egyptian template: elite movement combined with holds, disguised drops and an ability to attack from positions where earlier generations would have played safe. She won world junior titles before she was 16 and has stayed at the top for more than a decade, an unusual longevity in a system that burns through prodigies, and she is the athlete most likely to carry Egypt's flag into the 2028 Olympic tournament.