How close top players are to their own best ranking at every age, men and women.
Results to 2 November 2026.
In May 2026 Amina Orfi won the World Championship at 18, beating Nour ElSherbini 14-12 in the fifth game of a 106-minute final. The player she beat is more than ten years older, and still one of the best in the world.
Some players are near the top in their teens, others reach their best ranking after 30. So when is a squash player at their best? We followed 98 players who reached the world top 25 through every ranking list of their careers and, at each age, compared their ranking with their own career best.
The short answer: the typical player reaches their best ranking at 28.2 (men) and 27.7 (women), and the years from 26 to 32 are the prime of a career. Women get close to their best sooner; the men catch up by 26, and from 26 to 32 the two tours look much the same.
Key findings
- Squash players reach their best ranking in their late twenties, later than in tennis and badminton.
- Few players are near their best before their mid-twenties.
- Women get near their best sooner, but their peak does not last longer.
- An early start buys more years near the top, not a higher peak.
- The men’s big-title winners are getting older, the women’s younger.
- About half of today’s top 50 will be in their prime at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
How Old Are the World’s Best?
Start with the ranking lists themselves: the median age of the world’s top 10, top 25 and top 50, year by year, since the lists are full enough to tell.
- The men’s tour has got older. The median age of the top 25 was 27.2 in 2003; it has been 28 or older every year since 2010 and reached 30.3 in 2025. This year it is 29.2.
- The women’s hasn’t. It has stayed between 26.1 and 28.7 the whole time, and is 27.1 this year.
- The very top is older still. This year the men’s top 10 has a median age of 29.4 and the women’s 28.0, both above their top 25. With only ten players it swings more: the men’s top 10 has twice gone past 31, around 2014 and again in the mid-2020s, when it reached 31.5.
- Deeper down, the two tours part ways. The men’s top 50 has aged the most, from 25.5 in 2004 to 29.3: this year the men’s top 10, 25 and 50 are all about 29. On the women’s tour, the deeper the list, the younger it gets: 28.0 for the top 10, 27.1 for the top 25 and 26.2 for the top 50, which has stayed between 25.3 and 26.7 since 2004.
An older tour does not by itself mean later peaks: players may simply stay near the top longer. To find the peak, the rest of the article follows the players’ careers.
Take-away: The world’s best are in their late twenties. The men’s tour has grown older all the way down to No.50; the women’s has not, and its younger players sit just below the top.
How We Measured the Peak
- Players: everyone who reached the world top 25 with a career that started in 2001 or later and has played out: 51 men and 47 women. Before 2001 the ranking lists we have hold only the players near the top, so the early years of older careers are missing.
- Played out means off the ranking lists for a year, or 30 or older on their last list. A young player still climbing hasn’t reached their best yet, and counting today’s ranking as their best would make careers look as if they peak too soon. This leaves out 50 players still on tour, among them most of today’s top 10; they appear in Today’s Top 10 and Looking Ahead to LA 2028 instead.
- Near their best: a player is near their best at an age if they were ranked within 1.5 times their career-best ranking that year. A player whose best is No.10 is near it while in the top 15, one whose best is No.20 while in the top 30. (A No.1 counts down to No.3.)
- Exact dates of birth only. All but one of the players who qualify have one.
- Why not count wins? A player’s win rate barely moves with age. Draws match players against others of a similar level, so as a player climbs they meet better opponents and keep winning about as often. The ranking shows the peak; the win rate doesn’t.
The Age Curve
Squash is not a young player’s game. At 20 hardly anyone is near their best; by the late twenties most are. The chart shows, at each age, the share of players who were near their career-best ranking that year. Hover over a point to see who they were.
- Few are near their best before 22: 9% of the men and 12% of the women at 20.
- The prime years: from 26 to 32 at least four in ten of the players are near their best, rising to 61% of the men at 30 and 65% of the women at 29.
- After 32 the curve falls, and fewer players are still ranked at all. Those who are tend to be the ones who stayed good, so the right-hand end of the curve flatters the thirties a little.
Take-away: Players are rarely near their best before their mid-twenties; the prime years run from about 26 to 32.
When Careers Peak
Every career has one high point: the best ranking a player ever reaches. The chart puts a dot at the age each player first got there; the larger dots are players who made the top 10.
- The typical peak: 28.2 for the men and 27.7 for the women.
- The middle half of the men peaked between 26.6 and 30.3, of the women between 24.7 and 29.9.
- The extremes: Habiba Mohamed reached her best, No.18, at 16.0; Campbell Grayson reached his, No.24, at 33.9.
- The very best arrive early. Four of the seven world No.1s among these players reached their best before 26: Nour ElSherbini, Ramy Ashour, Mohamed ElShorbagy and Karim Gawad. So did four No.1s still on tour: Mostafa Asal (at 21.7), Amina Orfi (19.2), Nouran Gohar (22.8) and Hania El Hammamy (25.2). Their careers are still going, so they are not counted here.
There is a catch with the No.1s. Their best ranking is fixed the day they first reach No.1, because they cannot go any higher. ElSherbini first got there at 20.5 and held it for 5.3 years in all. For the best players, the age at their best marks when they arrived, not when their peak ended. How long they stay is the next question.
Take-away: The typical top-25 player reaches their best ranking in their late twenties, though a few peak far earlier or later, and most of the No.1s got there before 26.
Early and Late Bloomers
Nour ElSherbini and Paul Coll both reached No.1, by very different roads. ElSherbini was near her best at 20 and, at 31, still is. Coll wasn’t near his until 29. So does an early start make a better player?
We sorted the players by the age at which they were first near their career best: early bloomers before 23, late bloomers from 27, and the average peak in between. Each bar runs from a player’s first ranking list near their best to their last; hover over the dot to see who it is.
- An early start doesn’t mean a higher peak. On both tours the early bloomers’ typical best ranking is no better than the late bloomers’.
- For the women it does mean more years at the top. Women who arrive early stay near their best for 6.0 years, the late bloomers for 1.9. ElSherbini has been near hers for more than ten years.
- Men rarely start early, and gain no time by it. Only five of the 51 men were near their best before 23, and they stayed there no longer than the rest: Ramy Ashour, the best of them, from 19 to 26.
- The men’s late bloomers are a strong group: eight of them reached the top five, more than in either other group. Coll is one; Tarek Momen, world No.3 and near his best from 30, is another.
The women’s tour rewards a fast start with time; the men’s tour lets a patient player catch up. That is a difference between players within each tour. Between the two tours, the difference is when the whole window opens.
Take-away: An early start buys more years near the top, especially for women, but not a higher peak; many of the men’s best players were late bloomers.
Men and Women
The two tours differ in timing, not in length.
- Women get there sooner. At 24, 42% of the women are near their best against 10% of the men, a gap of 32 points.
- From 26 to 32 the curves run together. They are never more than 9 points apart, and both fall away after 32.
- The whole window comes earlier. The typical woman is near her best from 25.0 to 30.5, the typical man from 26.0 to 31.6: about 4.3 years on both tours. Women’s peaks don’t last longer; they start, and end, a little sooner, which is why the women’s median peak age is a little lower.
The data shows the difference but not its cause. The women’s tour has been less deep than the men’s for most of this period, which may let young players rise faster; we can’t test that here.
Take-away: Women get near their best sooner, but their peak does not last longer: the whole window comes about a year earlier.
The World No.1s
The No.1 is on every ranking list since the rankings began, so here we can go back to the start: 52 years of men’s lists and 42 of women’s. The chart adds up the time at No.1 by the age of whoever held it.
- The typical No.1 is 27: half the time at the top was held by a No.1 younger than 27.2 (men) or 27.3 (women). Since 2001 the men’s figure is 28.7, the women’s 27.4.
- The prime years again: No.1s aged 26 to 32 held the top for 54% of the time on the men’s lists and 61% on the women’s.
- The youngest: Jahangir Khan was No.1 at 18.1 and Jansher Khan at 18.6, and both stayed there into their late twenties. Amina Orfi is the youngest women’s No.1, at 19.2.
- The oldest: Gregory Gaultier was still No.1 at 35.1 and Sarah Fitz-Gerald at 34.2. Laura Massaro waited longest for her first turn at the top: she was 32.2.
Take-away: The No.1 spot belongs to the prime years too: most of the time at the top was held by players aged 26 to 32.
The Big Titles
The age of the winner at every big title: the World Championships, the Tour Finals and the Platinum events (320 men’s titles and 147 women’s).
- The typical winner is 27.0 (men) and 26.7 (women).
- The 1980s were the Khans’ decade: the median men’s winner was 20.7. Since then it has risen to 28.6 in the 2020s, the oldest since the 1970s.
- The women have gone the other way. The median winner was 28.5 in the 2010s and is 25.7 in the 2020s, the youngest since the 1980s.
- The youngest winners: Jahangir Khan at 18.0 (World Open 1981) and Amina Orfi at 18.9 (PSA World Championship 2026).
- The oldest: Nick Matthew at 34.6 (Windy City Open 2015) and Heather McKay at 37.6 (World Open 1979).
The men’s winners have aged with the men’s tour, as the chart at the top of the article showed. The women’s winners are younger although the women’s top 25 has hardly changed, so the big titles are going to the younger players near the top. Neither means players now peak at a different age: an older tour can also be one whose players stay near the top longer. The age curve, which follows each career, is the better guide.
Take-away: Big titles are won in the late twenties, and the men’s winners are getting older while the women’s are getting younger.
How Squash Compares
Other racket sports have been measured too, though with other methods, so the numbers are a guide rather than a like-for-like comparison.
- Tennis: on Elo ratings, men peak at about 25 (26 to 27 for players born in the 1980s) and women at 23 to 24 (Tennis Abstract, 2019).
- Badminton: the top 100 reached their best ranking at 25.6 (men) and 23.6 (women) on average, and has been getting older on both tours: from 23.7 to 26.3 (men) and 22.8 to 24.7 (women) between 1994 and 2020 (Abián et al., 2021).
- Across racket sports: the top 10 and top 50 men in tennis, badminton, table tennis and squash were about the same age at the end of 2021 (Biber et al., 2022). That is the age of the whole ranking list, not the age at the peak, so it says little about when players are at their best.
So squash’s top players peak later: at 28.2 (men) and 27.7 (women), against about 25 to 27 and 23 to 24 in tennis and badminton. In both of those sports women peak about two years before men; among squash’s top 25 the gap is under a year. What squash shares with them is the pattern on the way up: women get near their best sooner.
Like for like with badminton. The badminton study looked at the whole top 100, so here is squash’s top 100 measured the same way:
- The best ranking comes at 26.1 (men) and 24.4 (women), against 25.6 and 23.6 in badminton: half a year to a year later in squash. Across the top 100, squash women peak 1.7 years before the men, close to badminton’s two.
- The top 100 is getting older in squash too, on both tours. The men’s held at about 25.7 up to 2011 and is 27.4 now. The women’s has gone from 23.6 in 2004 to 25.5. Squash’s top 100 is now 1.1 years older than badminton’s was in 2020 (men) and 0.8 (women).
- At the very top it differs. The women’s top 25 hasn’t got older (see above): the women’s tour has aged below the top, not at it.
Take-away: Squash players peak later than tennis and badminton players, and the gap between women and men is smaller.
Today’s Top 10
Where today’s top players stand against the prime years. A filled dot means the player is at their career-best ranking now.
- The prime years still rule: five of the men’s top 10 and seven of the women’s are aged 26 to 32.
- Ahead of the curve: Amina Orfi is world No.1 at 19, and Mohamad Zakaria No.4 at 19.
- Beyond it: Karim Gawad (No.5, 35), the oldest, Paul Coll (No.2, 34) and Marwan ElShorbagy (No.9, 33) are all still in the men’s top 10, and Amanda Sobhy (No.10, 33) in the women’s, well past the age at which most players are near their best.
- The No.1s: Mostafa Asal, at 25, and Orfi are both younger than the typical No.1.
Take-away: Today’s top 10 follows the curve, with its youngest players well ahead of it and a few veterans holding on beyond it.
Looking Ahead to LA 2028
Squash will be at the Olympics for the first time in Los Angeles, with the Games opening on 14 July 2028 (LA28). Who will be in their prime when they get there? The chart places today’s top 50 at the age they will be that day.
- About half of each tour will be in the prime years: 25 of the men’s top 50 and 29 of the women’s will be aged 26 to 32, including five of the men’s top 10 and seven of the women’s.
- The men’s tour will be the older field: 17 of its top 50 will be past 32, against 8 under 26. On the women’s side it is the other way: 17 under 26 and 4 past 32.
- Right on time: Mostafa Asal will be 27, in the middle of the prime years.
- Early: Amina Orfi will be 21 and Mohamad Zakaria 20, younger than most players at their best.
- Late: Paul Coll will be 36 and Karim Gawad 36. Nour ElSherbini, at 32, will be at the very end of the prime years.
Who actually plays depends on qualification, and two years is a long time on tour. But it brings us back to that final in May. Orfi cannot rank any higher than No.1, so her question is not how high but how long. The women who arrive early are the ones who stay: ElSherbini, the player she beat, has been near her best for more than a decade. Zakaria’s road is rarer. Few men are this good this young, and those who were did not stay near the top any longer than the late bloomers. In Los Angeles the curve will favour Asal; the early bloomers say Orfi may still be near the top long after.
Take-away: About half of today’s top 50 will be in their prime at LA 2028, Asal among them; the men’s field will be the older one, and Orfi and Zakaria will arrive years ahead of the curve.
Does the Cut-Off Matter?
The same measures for everyone who reached the top 50 (212 players) give the same picture: a typical peak at 27.2 (men) and 27.0 (women), women near their best sooner (50% against 34% at 24), and the two curves close together from 26 to 32.
Counting the 50 players still on tour anyway would bring the typical peak down to 27.4 (men) and 26.0 (women). That is not a younger peak: for a player still climbing, the data only has their best so far, and a career cut off today tends to look as if it peaked early.
The top 100 (526 players) keeps the prime years: about half or more are near their best at every age from 26 to 32 on both tours (60% of the men and 62% of the women at 28). But it peaks earlier, at 26.1 (men) and 24.4 (women). Two things likely pull it down:
- Shorter careers. Many players whose best is around No.60 to No.100 reach it young and leave the tour within a few years.
- A wider band. A player whose best is No.80 counts as near it anywhere up to No.120, so more young players count as near their best.
The top 100 also rests on less complete birth dates (97% of the men have an exact one, 94% of the women). The wider band, the shorter careers and the gaps are why the article uses the top 25.
Take-away: A wider cut-off keeps the same prime years; only the top 100 peaks earlier, mostly because of how it is measured.
About the Data
- Results to 2 November 2026. Ranking lists from 2001: one a month at first, one a week since 2017.
- Ages are worked out from exact dates of birth; a player’s age on a list is the list date minus their date of birth.
- A player’s ranking at an age is the highest they held while that age.
- Only ages with at least twenty players are shown on the curve: with fewer, one player moves the share by five points or more.
- The No.1s and the big titles go back to the first ranking lists (1975 for the men, 1983 for the women) and the first titles in the data, with every No.1 and title winner who has an exact date of birth: all but Cassie Jackman. Women’s big titles are few before 2010, so the women’s decade medians before then rest on a handful of finals.
- Time at No.1 counts from each list to the next.
- Survivor bias: players still ranked in their thirties are the ones who stayed good, so the curve shows those still playing, not everyone who started.
Over to You
Who will win squash’s first Olympic golds in Los Angeles, and will they be in their prime? Tell us in the comments below.