February 21, 1974
The ISPA (International Squash Players Association) is founded.
It was the vagaries of seedings being produced for events that eventually resulted in a professional players association being formed for male professional players.
The ‘final straw’ came during the build up to the Prodorite Open, an event due to take place in Birmingham in February. The SRA – the forerunner to England Squash – seedings for the event were thought to be unsatisfactory by many of the players due to compete at the event, a feeling that led to the withdrawal of Australian Ken Hiscoe in protest.
This incident was the catalyst for numerous other unresolved clashes between the players and the SRA to come to the fore. At that time the management of squash was generally focussed on the amateur game – it wasn’t until 1980 that amateur status was abolished. The incident in 1974 came just a few years after Jonah Barrington, who was the first pro player to cut himself off from the clubs and earn his entire living from tournaments, exhibitions and clinics had organised a five-man tour of Asia that sowed the first seeds regarding the need for a professional body.
This was an era that had seen top American tennis players Donald Dell and Jack Kramer, along with South Africa’s Cliff Drysdale, form the ATP in 1972, two years after Billie-Jean King had led a breakaway of nine players from the existing governing bodies of the day to form the forerunner to the WTA of modern times in women’s tennis.
Within squash, players competing as professional during the era felt unable to control their arrangements, and thus their livelihoods, due to the administration at the time.
Hence the crisis meeting in 1974, after which Jonah Barrington announced that the ISPA had been formed.
Speaking at the time he said: “Our simple aims are to co-ordinate as a professional players’ body and to protect that body’s interests on an international basis; to liase and work with all the governing bodies, tournament organisations, and the sponsors to further safeguard the future development of competitive professional squash throughout the world.”
At that meeting Barrington was appointed ISPA Chairman, Hiscoe was named President, with Geoff Hunt named Vice President. Englishman Geoff Poole was installed as the first ISPA Secretary to oversee the administration.
Once membership was instituted, the ISPA began its own coordinated tour with events registering, the creation of Tour Rules that were evolved over time, and a code of conduct required of all members.
A squash-specific computer-rankings system was developed and brought into use for the first time in 1979.
Two years after the creation of the ISPA, the inaugural World Open Championships took place – in1976. Heather McKay and Geoff Hunt, two legendary Australians, won the respective women’s and men’s draws.
WISPA IS Formed
During the late 1970s a group of women advocated for the creation of a women’s specific governing body – and in 1978 the first attempt to create a stand-alone women’s organisation was attempted.
On that occasion the idea didn’t take hold, so the governance of the women’s game was incorporated into the ISRF (now the WSF).
Janet Morgan Shardlow, the ten-time British Open champion, chaired the WISRF.
At the same time teaching pros like Angela Smith and Sue Cogswell became full-time touring pros.
Five years later in 1983, a meeting at the World Open in Perth the player gathering this time agreed that a stand-alone women’s organisation should be created – and the WISPA came into being. The first meeting of the association was held at the Belfast Boat Club in Northern Ireland the following year.
In 2012 the body then changed it’s name to the Women’s Squash Association (WSA).
PSA & WSA Join Forces
In 2015 the men’s association (the PSA) and the women’s association (WSA) merged under the PSA banner.
The Founders
While it was the vagaries of seedings that provided the final catalyst for the creation of a professional players association, it was arguably the exploits of the fledgling association’s three main protagonists in the year’s prior to the formation of the association that had laid the foundations upon which the ISPA could be built.
Jonah Barrington – The Chairman
Enigmatic, charismatic and a fierce competitor, it could be argued that without the efforts of Jonah Barrington in the years preceding the formation of the ISPA, there may never have been a professional body.
Barrington had arrived to squash late in his life by modern standards. As a young man Barrington had been without aims and without means. He attended Trinity College, Dublin but enjoyed a better attendance at the local pub than the lecture halls, subsequently dropping out of university to drift and become plagued by failure and self-criticism.
Through squash, Barrington turned his life around. An almost chance encounter led him to the Squash Rackets Association in the 1960s – then a stuffy, closed organisation focused on the administration of the amateur game of squash.
Barrington shunned the white clothing regulations, the closed-door mentality and made it his mission to transform the sport – starting with his own transformation on court.
Not long after finding this life-changing purpose, Barrington was beaten for the loss of only two points by Azam Khan, then the world’s best player. However, by 1967, with the help of Nasrullah Khan, his famously strict Pakistani coach who himself was a top player, the Anglo-Irishman had won the British Open for the first time.
Two years later Barrington took a plunge into the unknown in 1969 by becoming the first full-time professional squash player – solely earning his living from competition play. Prior to this, the term ‘professional’ had referred to players who earned their living through coaching others – Barrington was the first to deviate from this path.
His pioneering vision led to the wholesale transformation of a sport which, in 1969, had no world championship, no television coverage and no clear path forward.
Barrington was a star wherever he went. He was refreshingly forthright, a magnetic raconteur and an incisive commentator. He was unafraid to be controversial.
Consequently, he generated publicity like no one before or since. Though he was indeed an extraordinary player, it was as a passionate talker and a spellbinding visionary that he achieved more.
He embarked on a planet-circling sequence of clinics, tours and exhibitions, helping to lay the foundations, along with Australians Geoff Hunt and Kenny Hiscoe, for the creation of the International Squash Players Association.
Geoff Hunt – The President
Geoff Hunt was born into a squash family, in Melbourne, Australia in 1947 and, aged just 15, had clinched the state of Victoria’s men’s championship, defeating his older brother Bill in the final.
One year later, Hunt toured England with the Australian senior team as the youngest player on tour – he would retire aged 34 as the oldest Briths Open Champion of the Open era.
That portentous arrival in the mid-1960s occurred when squash was not yet professional and his first major final, at the British Amateur Championship, was played amidst the 18th century grandeur of the Lansdowne Club, a private haven of tranquillity in London’s exclusive Mayfair district.
In 1969 Hunt cemented his name in the squash history books, winning the British Open, and beginning a fierce some on court rivalry with Barrington, a rivalry that would lead to some of the greatest squash matches of the era, and indeed all time.
Inspired by Barrington’s decision to go fully professional in 1969, Hunt made the same decision aged 24 and, despite their on court rivalry, formed a strategic allegiance with Barrington off-court to drive the sport forward. During the same time Hunt formed a partnership with Ken Hiscoe, playing exhibition matches and conducting coaching clinics globally, whilst also competing alongside Barrington in travelling clinics and roadshows – all of which helped pave the way for the ISPA to come along
Ken Hiscoe – The Vice President
Prior to the arrival of Geoff Hunt, Ken Hiscoe was the leading light of Australian squash in the amateur era and widely considered as one of the finest ball strikers of all time.
A seven-time Australian Open champion, he won the British Amateur in 1963 at the Lansdowne Club in London, becoming the first Australian to do so, and only the fourth overseas winner ever.
Hiscoe as team captain, alongside Hunt and Cam Nancarrow, flew the flag for Australia on the amateur scene during the 1960s, but Hiscoe made the decision alongside Hunt to go professional in 1971.
Long haired, muscled and toned, Hiscoe was an advertisers dream, and his connections within the advertising industry proved to be vital in helping the fledgling ISPA find a media footing and lay the platform upon which to grow the sport.
With Barrington leading, and Hunt and Hiscoe providing substance behind him, the trio soon convinced leading Pakistani Gogi Aluddin to become the fourth member of the new body – with the very first ISPA event comprising a four man round robin.
Within 12 months all the leading players in the world: Qamar Zaman, Torsam Khan, Rahmat Khan, Ahmed Safwat and Roland Watson had joined the ISPA – and the foundations had been set.
