PSA50: The Dawning Of Professional Squash

By RJ Mitchell

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The dawning of professionalism in squash was driven by Jonah Barrington, who paralleled the ‘professional troupe’ template which had been successfully adopted by the great American and former Wimbledon winner Jack Kramer in the years leading up to the advent of the Open era in his sport (tennis) in 1968.

In squash, the straw that broke the camel’s back came in February 1974 when the SRA (Squash Rackets Association) botched the seeding at the Prodorite Open to such an extent that Australia’s multiple World Team Championship winning captain Ken Hiscoe withdrew in protest.

Subsequently, it was Barrington’s amalgam with Australia’s Hiscoe and Geoff Hunt that ultimately forged the nascent body in February 1974 which was to eventually morph into the Professional Squash Association.

With Barrington as Chairman, Hiscoe as President and Hunt as Vice President, squash was now ready and willing to embrace professionalism.

The Father Of The Professional Game:

In typically understated fashion, Hunt had no doubt in dubbing his great rival and good friend Barrington as the true father of the professional game.

“That (the Father of the Professional Game) is definitely a fair title as Jonah was the first one to turn professional and make a living at it,” Hunt said. “Previously you had people like Abou Taleb who had turned professional already but he was coaching and not playing for money and I think Abou was also paid by the Egyptian government.

“Then there were a few others like Nasrullah Khan, who coached Jonah, but again they coached to make a living. So make no mistake Jonah was the one who got the circuit going, created the tour and this led to our players’ association (ISPA) and on we went.”

When it came to the ethos that had increasingly been bringing Barrington into confrontation by the quasi-Victorian SRA, the game’s antiquated governing body, the six-time British Open champion was clear about his motivations.

Writing in his hugely insightful ‘Book of Jonah’ in 1972, Barrington said: “I wanted to change the Establishment’s attitude towards professionals: that the professional was not quite satisfactory because he tended to sully himself by taking money, prostituting his talent for the game.

“The general impression was that the professional was just a dog to whom the bone would be thrown at the end of the meal; he couldn’t be allowed to eat the meal with everyone else on the same level.

“It had also been part of my plan to campaign for Open squash. I think everyone will benefit from this. Both I and the other professional players would obviously be able to play more tournaments making it easier to keep a competitive edge.

“Thus financially it will be a good move to become a professional player whereas previously a man’s enthusiasm for doing so had been tempered because this move tended to end his competitive career.”

86 now, yet still succinct and to the point, the third member of that founding body, Ken Hiscoe, spoke with impressive clarity of recall: “We then thought about how we were going to go about this and I got very friendly with the South African captain David Dougan, and as it turned out his father-in-law was a guy called George Blomberg and he was one of the original agents who helped manage Gary Player (former Open Golf Champion).

“Blomberg also knew Mark McCormack, who had founded IMG (International Management Group), and it was only just starting to get rolling in the early 70s but their three main clients were Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus (golf legends).”

While McCormack was too busy cosseting his golfing greats and making increasing strides into the burgeoning professional world of tennis, Barrington, Hiscoe and Hunt now knew exactly what they needed to do to create the first professional body in squash’s history.

Ken continued: “We then made contact with a guy called John Beddington in the UK, who was a keen squash player himself, and he suggested to us that there were two things we needed to do.

“Firstly we needed a secretary and an office address where people could contact us and then we should have somebody in the media who could create a profile for us.

“So we enlisted a guy called Geoff Poole as secretary and also a Welsh guy called David Wynne-Morgan who was in advertising and that was how it started.

“David was very friendly with Nigel Dempster, who was a hugely influential journalist on Fleet Street, so that was our start and almost immediately Gogi Alauddin joined us, so there were basically four of us.”

As Ken recalled, the cream of the amateur game were soon knocking on their door: “So with all the top players joining us the amateur game couldn’t compete with us.

“In respect of the three of us, we were rivals but we had a good relationship and all credit to Jonah, he was squash in England.

“He had been out in Australia in ’68 and he beat me in the Australian amateur final but at the time he was sniffing about to become a pro and he just drove on from there. He was also a great promoter and a very good writer and he did a lot of fantastic articles, so we were rivals but we were mates.”

As Jonah added the momentum soon became irresistible: “1972 was a couple of years prior to ISPA being formed and the Open game was not supported by the amateur governing bodies, as the last thing they wanted was a professional game.

“So they made life very difficult for me personally, as I was the one selling the product, and they made it very awkward for me to play any competitions.

“So with Hiscoe and Hunt turning pro the ball was rolling and then we added (Gogi) Alauddin and we had a four and in ’74 all the young players wanted to join us and not to be held back by the amateur governing bodies, so it really took off in ’74.”

With Barrington appointed Chairman, Hiscoe President and Hunt Vice President, the major offices were filled with pragmatic purpose.

Ken revealed there could be no others: “We needed a president, vice president and a chairman and took it from there. We were the best players and people wanted to see us, really we had to take the leading positions.

“Our very first event was a four man round robin and that was ISPA’s maiden tournament. We’d had a lot of problems with the SRA, who just didn’t want to know.

“But within 12 months we had all the leading players in the world with us like Zaman, Torsam Khan, who was Jahangir’s older brother, Rahmat Khan, the great Egyptian Ahmed Safwat, and Roland Watson from South Africa all joined the ISPA sharpish.

“The unfortunate thing during that period was that the amateur game still held a World Amateur Individual and Team Championship in opposition to us and so ultimately the game never really went fully open until 1982.

“So there was a good 10 years where the fight went on between the pros and amateurs, but by ’73 Cam Nancarrow was the last good player who wasn’t a pro to win the Amateur Individual.”

As Geoff revealed there was one burning issue that kindled the bonfire of the SRA’s vanities: “We were playing tournaments where the International Squash Rackets Association had no idea of order and who was the best.

“So we had to provide them with our order of merit, as when they put their leading amateur players against us we couldn’t dictate what order they put them in, but we could dictate the order we were in. It just really irritated us that they put us all over the place with their seedings.

“Then the second reason was we wanted a more equitable set up when it came to the prize money distribution. Basically that was how we initiated it. But Jonah got it all going in the beginning and when we formed our association it was logical that he became the president.

“We had an affiliation fee, structured the prize fund, and had a ranking committee of which I was in charge – that wasn’t an easy one as everyone on the panel had an opinion, believe me!

“But we got there and when Geoff Poole came in as secretary he was the one who approached the ATP to get their computer ranking system and we adapted that and Jonah, Ken and I liaised with Geoff on it. So we all contributed in our own way.”

Looking back on half a century of professional squash, did the pro game governing body’s first president foresee the growth of our sport into an Olympic discipline?

Replying with a piece of typical Aussie straight-talking, Hiscoe said: “Looking back then, could I have imagined this (Olympics) would all have happened and the PSA following on from ISPA?

“Not really!”