🎾GOAT Rankings

The most complete domination in the history of any racket sport. McKay lost exactly two competitive matches in her entire career, both in 1962, and was never beaten again — a run of roughly nineteen unbeaten years. She won sixteen consecutive British Opens from 1962 to 1977, when the British Open was the sport's world championship in all but name, and then won the first two Women's World Opens in 1976 and 1979, giving her eighteen major titles. She also won the Australian championship fourteen times. Her superiority was so absolute that contemporaries struggled to describe her weaknesses, and when she retired she switched codes and won the women's world racquetball championship as well. The standard argument against her is field depth: women's squash in the 1960s was smaller and less professional than the men's game. The standard answer is that she never lost to anyone, for two decades, in any of it.

The most successful player in World Championship history on the men's side, with eight titles between 1987 and 1996 — one more than Jahangir managed — plus six consecutive British Opens from 1992 to 1997, for fourteen majors. He also accumulated the highest career total of professional tour titles in the men's game, widely cited at 99. No relation to the Khan dynasty of Nawakille despite the name, he lost his first six meetings with Jahangir and then rebuilt his game around retrieval and patience until he had turned the rivalry around; across 37 career meetings the two finished within a match of each other. His style was the purest expression of squash as attrition: extraordinary court coverage, minimal risk, and a willingness to let rallies run until the opponent broke. Injuries and the demands of that method shortened his peak, but between 1992 and 1996 he was effectively unbeatable and closed out Pakistan's four-decade grip on the sport.

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 bridge between the amateur game and the modern professional one, and the man who beat everybody before Jahangir Khan arrived. Hunt won eight British Opens between 1969 and 1981 and the first, second, fourth and fifth World Opens in 1976, 1977, 1979 and 1980 — twelve majors — after collecting multiple world amateur titles in the late 1960s. He matched Jonah Barrington's training revolution and added a far superior technical base, and their rivalry through the 1970s defined the decade. His last great act was the 1981 British Open final, in which he beat the 17-year-old Jahangir Khan; it was the final defeat before Jahangir's 555-match streak began, and Hunt retired soon afterwards, his body worn out by the volume of work the era demanded. He later became one of the sport's most influential coaches, running Australia's national programme and shaping a generation of Australian world champions.

The founder. A court professional from Nawakille near Peshawar who learned the game as a ball boy on British army courts, Hashim Khan flew to England in 1951, aged around 35 — his birth year is disputed between 1914 and 1916 — and won the British Open at his first attempt. He took seven British Open titles in eight years, the last in 1958, when he was in his forties, and continued winning North American professional events into his fifties after moving to Detroit. The World Open did not exist in his time, so his major count understates him. His real legacy is dynastic: brother Azam Khan won four British Opens, cousin Roshan Khan won in 1957, nephew Mohibullah followed, and Roshan's son Jahangir became the greatest player of all. Pakistani squash held the sport's summit for four decades and every strand of it traces back to him.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

The most naturally gifted player squash has produced, and the largest what-if in its history. Ashour won the world junior championship twice, in 2004 and 2006 — the first player to do so — and three World Championships, in 2008, 2012 and 2014, adding a British Open and long spells at world number one. His hallmark was a shot vocabulary nobody else possessed: holds that froze opponents mid-stride, flicked crosscourt nicks hit from impossible positions, and an ability to attack off balls that the coaching manual said must be played safe. At his best, through 2013 and 2014, he strung together long unbeaten runs and was regarded by his peers as untouchable. Chronic hamstring injuries repeatedly cut those runs short and eventually ended his career, and his major total sits well below the players above him. On pure ability, most professionals of his generation still name him first.