PSA50 – Vicki Cardwell: A Pioneer

Throughout the 1970s-90s, Vicki Cardwell (nee Hoffman) was a dominant force on the world squash scene and in the seven year period between 1978 and 1984 reached the semi-final or final of every tournament she competed in throughout the world.

A boisterous, brilliantly athletic Australian who led the women’s game through the first years of its nascent professional tour during the early 1980s, she became the best player in the world by force of personality as much as by skill and movement – then disappeared suddenly at the height of her powers.

Though small in stature, she appeared larger than she was because of a dynamic on-court presence, generated by spectacular movement, a left-handed ability to hit the ball with unexpected ferocity, a demonstrative personality and bristling determination to succeed.

Yet Cardwell’s squash success may have never materialised had it not been for the encouragement of her tennis coach. Not till she was 17 did she consider competing seriously on a squash court.

She claimed she had been “absolutely hopeless” during her first state junior championships, but she was such a natural athlete she quickly developed.

Four years later, she was Australia’s top player, reaching the British Open final the following year, 1978, and winning the title in 1980.

In that final she outplayed English top seed Sue Cogswell, who possessed a more creative game, but could not quell Cardwell’s strength of character and intimidating will to win.

Cardwell won the next British Open by beating fellow Aussie Margaret Zachariah in the final and made it four in a row by overcoming Lisa Opie, the teenaged home hope, in the two after that in ’82 and ’83.

1983 proved to be a seminal year for both Cardwell and the women’s game. It was in 1983 that the world’s top female players created their own association – the Women’s International Squash Players Association – to establish their own independent presence away from the international governing body of the time.

That same year saw Cardwell overcome title holder Rhonda Thorne in Perth late in 1983 in the World Open final – the one and inly time she would hold aloft the sport’s most prestigious titles – while she also became the first ever World no.1 on the official women’s world rankings.

Cardwell claims that her most memorable defeat also came against Thorne – in a two-hour world final in Toronto in 1981 then thought to be the longest women’s match yet played.

After losing 9-7 in the fifth, a mortified Cardwell hid in a tree and refused to come down.

Impulsive, voluble, forthright and warm, she was sometimes too controversial for those in authority.  When a contest with England’s Angela Smith in Birmingham deteriorated into a wrestling match, it brought disciplinary action against both players. This and other contentious incidents highlighted Cardwell as the first professional champion in a new era of increasing physicality and aggression.

Despite the negative gossip which ensued, these blemishes seemed symptomatic of something much bigger – the anger and freedom experienced by women players at last beginning to hurdle decades of social and economic barriers.

Despite the huge step forward for the women’s game with the formation of WISPA, at the age of just 28 and at the top of the World Rankings, Cardwell decided to hang up her racket in order to start a family.

Having won four consecutive British Opens and a World Championship and being ranked as the first women’s world no.1 – greater successful would have seemed inevitable.

With cruel irony, it was seven years before her first baby arrived. So, we never learned whether she was good enough to have delayed the onset of Susan Devoy, a little-known 20-year old New Zealander, who succeeded her as British Open champion and developed into the most successful female professional to then.

With typical courage and determination, Cardwell returned to the tour after having children,  competing in World Championships before and after each of her three pregnancies, winning a couple of Australian Opens and reaching world No.12 before retiring again aged 42.

These achievements inspired the creation of a special award, the Vicki Cardwell Comeback Player of the Year, and contributed to her inclusion in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and the award of a British Empire Medal.