Sue Newman (King)

• Inducted as a Member: 2009
• Born: April 24, 1950

Sue Newman-King has enjoyed one of the most distinguished careers in Australian squash history – as a player, a coach and as an administrator.
Sue’s first contact with squash came when her father built the Moorefield Squash Centre in Kogarah in Sydney’s south in 1957, and her involvement continues to this day.
But unlike many other children who were brought up in family-owned squash centres, Sue initially resisted the urge to play, instead earning pocket money by sweeping the courts at the end of the day’s play.
“The crazy thing is I didn’t start playing until I was 13,” she said.
She only picked up a racket when a patron, who had celebrated a little too freely at the Christmas drinks, challenged her to a contest to see who could bounce the most times on Sue’s pogo stick.
“I did about 200 and he fell off after three, so he said ‘come on, I’ll challenge you to a game of squash’, and that was it.”
From that hit, a future British Open champion was born.
Sue played her first pennant match in 1963 and remarkably has missed only six pennant competitions since then.
She won her first major titles in 1968 when she was crowned both NSW and Australian junior champion and then went on to become Australian Amateur Champion in 1975 and 1976, the first woman to win both the national junior and senior amateur titles.
She toured Britain and Ireland in the early 1970s, winning a swag of national titles along the way and reached the final of the British Open in 1976, where she came up against Heather McKay, a player who she had met many times before in New South Wales competitions.
When Heather retired Sue seized her chance and claimed the 1978 British Open with a win over Vicki Cardwell 9-4, 9-7, 9-2.
Sue captained Australia at the first Women’s World Teams Championships in 1979 in a team featuring fellow Hall of Fame inductee Barbara Wall, Rhonda Thorne, Vicki Cardwell and Anne Smith, and played at the top level for another two years before turning her hand to coaching and administration.
She has had a long involvement with US squash and has hosted many tours from the US as well as organising teams of young Australians to travel to North America.
Sue has been heavily involved in coaching juniors for the past 10 years and was current AIS player Scott Arnold’s coach before he moved to Brisbane,
She currently coaches Andrew Lloyd, the number three ranked boy in the 15 years age division in New South Wales.
Sue was awarded the Order of Australia in 1999 for services to squash and the Australian Sports Medal in 2000.

Career Highlights
1978 British Open
1975 Australian Amateur Champion
1976 Australian Amateur Champion
1976 Irish Open
1976 Scottish Open
1973 Welsh Open
1980 South of England Open
Four time NSW Open champion 1975, 1976, 1978, 1980
Two time NSW Amateur champion 1974, 1975

• Inducted as a Member: 2007
• Highest world ranking: 2
• World title: 1991

Cam Nancarrow

• Inducted as a Member: 2008
• Born: 9 April 1945
• Highest world ranking: 2
• World title 1973

Cam Nancarrow came to the sport that made him world champion almost by accident.
When in 1961 a squash centre was built near where he was living in the southern Sydney suburb of Rockdale , Cam’s father won a raffle held to celebrate the courts’ opening, taking home a racket, some balls and a pair of shoes.
But after playing the game a few times, Cam’s father decided it was too much like hard work and so gave the gear to his son, then a golf loving 16-year-old.
Cam gave it a shot and soon discovered he had a flair for the game, quickly developing into a top class junior, winning his first event when he took out the Combined High School championship in Sydney.
Success followed as Cam won a number of junior tournaments and made his way up the extremely powerful New South Wales ranks.
Cam won the Australian Amateur Championship in 1972 and followed that win with the British Amateur and New Zealand Open titles that same year.
He reached the peak the following year when he won the World Amateur title in South Africa, beating England’s Bryan Patterson in the final in straight games 9-2, 9-5, 9-3.
The 1973 championship was Cam’s third appearance in a World Championship final – he had gone down to fellow Hall of Famer Geoff Hunt 1967 and 1971.
Geoff also denied Cam the 1969 and 1977 British Open titles.
Cam turned professional after winning the 1973 title and toured extensively until he retired.
He won tournaments in winning tournaments in Scotland, New Guinea and South Africa, as well as Australia.
He said winning the Canadian Open in 1973 was one of his career highlights, as the North Americans played under different rules and using different balls and the Australians weren’t expected to get past the first round.
Cam also won four World Team Championships in a golden era for Australian squash.
“We had the strongest 2, 3 and 4 players in world squash,” he said.
“So if someone, like Jonah Barrington, beat Geoff at number 1, they still couldn’t beat us because our 2, 3, and 4 were so strong.
“In that period, our 2s, 3s, and 4s never lost a match.”
Cam, stepfather of former top Australian player Tristan, moved to Queensland in 1982, where he established a furniture restoration business.
He doesn’t play squash any more – in fact he’s gone full circle and if he’s not at home, odds are that you’ll find him on a golf course.”

Career Highlights
1973 World Amateur Champion beat Bryan Patterson of England 9-2, 9-5, 9-3 in South Africa
1973 World Teams Champion
1971 World Teams Champion
1969 World Teams Champion
1967 World Teams Champion
1972 Australian Amateur Champion

Kevin Shawcross

• Inducted as a Member: 2008
• Born: 3 December 1948
• Died: 3 June 1987
• Highest world ranking: 4
• World Title: 1976

When Kevin Shawcross beat South Africa’s Dave Scott to win the 1976 World Amateur Championship, the larger than life character had fulfilled all the promise he had shown learning the game on his parents’ squash courts in the New South Wales town of Lithgow.
Kevin was 28 at the time and had already carved a reputation as one of the true characters of the game.
With a playing weight of 101 kilograms (16 stone), Kevin was built more like a footballer than a squash player, but his amazing natural ability more than compensated for his size.
The Pakistan players with whom he was great friends used to refer to him as a God because they couldn’t believe someone that big could play so well.
Kevin’s brother Denis says Kevin did everything wrong on the court.
“He had no back lift, no follow through – it was all in the wrist,” he said. “I think he was one of the first players in the world to develop a fan shot – he just had a real natural ability.”
Kevin loved to live life to the full and was enormously popular in England and Ireland, where he gave free exhibitions and mingled with fans well after a tournament.
He was a renowned socialiser and although he remained based in Lithgow, he loved to travel the world playing the sport he loved.
Kevin found it hard to settle down once he left the tour behind as he missed the life of a touring professional.
While the highlight of his career was his 1976 World title, Kevin also won a string of other tournaments, including the Swiss and New Zealand Opens in 1976 (he turned professional after his world amateur win that year), and the 1975 Australian, British and New South Wales amateur titles.
He also won the Scandinavian Open in 1975.
Kevin played on New South Wales and Australian teams from 1964-76, his last appearance for Australia being the 1976 Men’s World Team Championships.
Coincidentally, current Australian great David Palmer learned his squash on the same courts that Kevin’s father built in Lithgow in 1960.
Both Kevin and David have also been inducted into the city of Lithgow’s own sports Hall of Fame

Career Highlights
1976 World Amateur Champion
1976 Swiss Open
1976 NZ Open
1975 Australian Amateur Champion
1975 British Amateur Champion
1975 NSW Amateur Champion
1975 Scandinavian Open
1965 Australian Junior Champion

• Inducted as a Member: 2006
• Born: 6 February 1958
• Highest world ranking: 1
• World Title: 1981

Barbara Wall

• Inducted as a Member: 2009
• Born: May 25, 1948

Barbara Wall created sporting history in 1973 and became a trailblazer for countless others when she became the first Australian female squash player to turn professional.
Born in Perth in 1948, Barbara learned to play the game in the squash centre that her parents George and Enid built.
“Dad built one of the first centres in Western Australia where people could walk in off the street, pay their money and have a game,” she said.
“Squash was booming back then. In those days you couldn’t get on a court on Saturdays and Sundays.
“We had to wait for someone to be late, and then we’d race down and have a hit.”
Barbara played both tennis and squash as a youngster, but opted to concentrate on squash because at that time it offered far more opportunities to travel interstate and play national tournaments, a big attraction for a teenager living in Perth in the 1960s.
“It was very exciting in those days to get on a plane and travel east,” she said with a laugh.
She never really thought seriously of playing squash for a living and had even semi-retired from the sport in her mid-20s when she was restricted from playing in Australia because of her professional status.
During that period she ran a coaching school in Perth and managed her father’s squash centre, but when she travelled to Sydney in 1976 to watch the Australian championships, the British team members told her that professionals could play in British tournaments and she decided then and there that that was her future.
“They opened it up which allowed Heather (McKay) to keep competing because she was turning professional, and I decided that it was a great way to see the world,” she said.
“I’d never been overseas so I came home and I decided I would sell everything and go to England and play in the tournaments.”
In 1977 she made the final of the British Open, the first unseeded player to do so, only to come up against the formidable Heather McKay in Heather’s last British Open.
“I hadn’t competed for four years and I wasn’t one of the top players, but I think I got over there and for the first time in my life I had three months just hitting squash balls – and I got better and better,” she said.
“Nobody knew who I was and even in Perth people were saying ‘Who’s Barbara Wall?’
“I thought nothing better would ever happen to me in my life -- to get to the final of the British Open and play Heather McKay.”
However, two years’ later better things would happen.
The following year she had a minor setback when she went out to 2007 Hall of Fame inductee Rhonda Clayton (Thorne) in the quarter-finals, and South African professional Alan Colburn told her that he thought she would go back to Australia with her talent unfulfilled.
“He was a wonderful pro and he did some work with me, but he said I would never know how good I could have been -- I would never realise my true potential,” Barbara said.
With those words ringing in her ears, Barbara returned to Australia and contacted Australian track and field legend Shirley De La Hunty (Strickland), who spent almost 12 months helping her with her fitness training and her speed work.
She went back to England and went on to win the title in 1979, downing England’s Sue Cogswell 8-10, 6-9, 9-4, 9-4, 9-3 in the final
“It was the most wonderful thrill to win it – you dream of it, but you never dream it will happen really,” she said.
Barbara still regards that win as the highlight of a glittering career, which also includes winning the Irish Open, the Belgian and Danish Opens and the South African Champion of Champions.
She was also chosen in the Australian team for the first ever Women’s World Team Championship in 1979 alongside Rhonda Clayton, Vicki Cardwell, Sue King and Anne Smith, where they finished second to a combined Great Britain team.
She said being inducted into the Hall of Fame, after nearly 20 years away from the sport, was a huge honour for her.
“It’s not just about winning the British Open – it’s about my whole life in squash, and for 35 years it was my life.”

Career Highlights
1979 British Open
1978 Irish Open
1979 South African Champion of Champions
1979 NSW Open
Four time WA champion – 1969, 1970, 1971, 1979

Liz Irving

• Inducted as a Member: 2011
• Born: February 7, 1965
• Highest world ranking: 2 (1998)

Liz Irving won four consecutive women’s world teams titles in the 1990s as part of one of the greatest Australian teams in any sport in any period.

Irving, born in Brisbane on February 7, 1965, won nine titles on the women’s professional tour during a distinguished career, beginning with the Irish Open in 1991 and ending in Malaysia in 1997. That figure would have been far greater if she hadn’t had the “misfortune” of playing in the same era as the great Michelle Martin, who she always seemed to come up against in major finals.

Irving finished runner-up to Martin at the 1993 World Open, the 1994 and 1995 British Opens and the Australian Opens of 1991, 1993 and 1994. But when she and Martin played alongside each other in the Australian team they were almost unbeatable. In 1990, they finished runners-up to England, and unbeaten for the next four editions when they were joined by fellow Hall of Fame member Sarah Fitz-Gerald, Robyn Lambourne (1992) and Carol Owens (1994 and 1998).

Irving won the mixed doubles titles at the inaugural World Doubles Squash Championships in 1997 with Dan Jenson. Since retiring as a player, Irving has settled in Amsterdam, where she coaches a number of top international women players, including world number one Nicol David.

Career Highlights
1992, 94, 96, 98 Women’s World Teams Champion
1991 Irish Open
1995 Malaysian Open
1993 Australian Junior Champion

Rodney Eyles

• Inducted as a Member: 2008
• Highest world ranking: 2 (1996-97)
• World Title: 1997

Rodney Eyles reached the pinnacle of his career in 1997 when he comprehensively defeated England’s Peter Nicol in straight games in Kuala Lumpur to take out his only World Open title.
It was a sweet victory for Eyles, who went down fighting in the previous year’s World Open final to the great Pakistani, Jansher Khan, in four games. This was a golden period for the then world No.2 Eyles who reeled in several major titles and was one of the dominant forces on the world tour.
The Queenslander clinched four tournaments in 1996 – the US Open in Minneapolis, which followed his US Open success two years earlier; the French Open in Paris; the Hong Kong Open; and the Hungarian Open in Budapest. He also reached the finals of the British Open, the Tournament of Champions, the Qatar Open and the Pakistan Open in the same year. And he added the Australian Open title the following year as well as being crowned world champion.
Eyles’ other tournament victories included the Mahindra Open in Bombay, the Italian Open in Florence, the North American Open in Denver, Colorado and the Tournament of Champions in New York. He was also a member of Australia’s 1991 world title winning squad in Helsinki, Finland, and captained the Aussies from 1994-97.
Squash was introduced to the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 and Eyles teamed up with Byron Davis to claim a silver medal for Australia in the men’s doubles. His presence on the world tour was also felt off the court when he held the prestigious position of Professional Squash Association (PSA) president from 1996-98. Eyles eventually retired from the World Tour in November, 2000 after a highly successful career.

Career highlights
1997 World Open Champion
1991 World Men’s Teams Champion
1997 Australian Open
1996 US Open
1997 Australian Open Champion
1985 Australian Junior Champion
1986 Australian Junior Champion
1998 Commonwealth Games men’s doubles silver medal

Steven Bowditch

• Inducted as a Member: 2015
• Date of Birth: August 9 1955

During his career Steven Bowditch was the ultimate squash nomad, living in 10 countries and travelling and playing in more than 50. Born in Darwin, Northern Territory and a descendant of the Arabana people from outback South Australia - an Aboriginal native title group who claim some of the oldest games and playing fields in the world.

After winning the Northern Territory Open at just 15 years he travelled south to represent New South Wales and Australia as a junior. Competing in the Australian junior championships from 1970 to 1974. In 1976 as an amateur he travelled Europe for the first time and represented in an unofficial Australian Amateur team that toured Sweden before returning and winning his first professional tournament the Port Adelaide Open in 1977.

Known for his spectacular shot making and lightning reflexes he was one of the few players who straddled both the ISPA, the International Squash Professional Association tour and the American WPSA World Professional Squash Association hardball tours. Being ranked in the top 16 and the top 8 respectively from the late 1970’s to late 1980’s. Achieving a high of no. 2 on the American Hardball tour in 1986.

His best results came in the 1981 at the ISRF World Individual Championships in Sweden. A kind of “Bradbury moment” as neither Jahangir Khan or Geoff Hunt competed due to lack of prize money as Amateur squash transitioned to the Open era. The following week he captained the Australian team to runner up in the World Teams. In hardball squash he was twice runner up in their major; the North American Open, 1985 & 1986. Including against Jahangir on a New York Broadway stage in 1985.

Bowditch also gave to squash as an administrator, tournament organiser in Darwin and Austria, spent time on the World Squash Council, and as a national coach –for Malaysia and as a trainer for the Swedish and Austrian teams. He has also been accomplished at golf, tennis, basketball and Aussie Rules football.

Interestingly, Steven can claim to have played and/or been mentored by most of the legends of the game including Heather Mckay, Geoff Hunt, Hashim Khan, Jonah Barrington, Abou Taleb, Jahangir Khan, Jansher Khan, Sharif Khan and the American Hardball legend Mark Talbot. This the subject of a squash book he is writing called Tips from Squash Legends & Dreamtime Sky Hero.

Jenny Irving

• Inducted as a Member: 2022

Jenny Irving has shown outstanding dedication to the sport, evidenced by her longevity – 25 years playing competitively at a high level. Known for her dogged fighting ability, Jenny was in the same era as Heather McKay and was runner up in several Australian and Victorian Championships 1962-1970. Jenny was an invaluable team member for Australia, representing in the first official touring team to defeat the UK.  

Marion Jackman 

• Inducted as a Member: 2022

Marion Jackman was a vital member of the Women’s Australian team from 1965 to mid 70’s. Playing at number 2 in 1965 & 67. She competed in the Australian team in again 1971, 1972 and 1975 before turning professional at the age of 34. Marion went on to reach the final of the inaugural World Women’s Championships held in Brisbane in 1976 finishing runner up to Heather McKay. Marion eventually retired from competitive squash in 2003. Marion was awarded the Australian Sports Medallion in 2000 and in 2006 was inducted into the Squash Queensland Hall of Fame.  

Brett Martin 

• Inducted as a Member: 2022

Brett Martin was among the game’s leading players in the late 80’s-mid 1990’s. Martin reached a career high of World no. 2 behind the famous Jansher Khan. During Brett’s time at the top he represented Australia 3 times at the Men’s World Team Championships winning 2 of the 3 finals. In 1989 the team beat Pakistan 3/0 in the finals of the championships held in Singapore. The team backed up this form in 1991 defeating England 3/0 to take the crown. Brett claimed 2 Australian Open titles in 1994 and 1996. Since then Brett has continued to compete in masters events claiming 2 WSF World Masters Championships in 2018 and 2021.

Women's Teams 1964-1967 V UK

• Inducted as Members: 2022
• The team included Heather Blundell later McKay, Jenny Irving, Barbara Baxter, Helen Plaisted, Marion Jackman and Pat McClenaughan.
• In 1964 the team of Heather, Jenny, Pat, Barbara and Helen played the 1 International test match against Great Britain in the UK. The team won 3 out of 5 matches which took 4 and a half hours to seal the victory. 
• In 1965 in Australia the team won the 3-match test series against Great Britain 3 nil. The team included Heather Blundell, Marion Jackman and Jenny Irving. 
• 1967 International test series returned to the UK where the team of Heather McKay, Marion Jackman and Barbara Baxter won 2/1 against their rivals Great Britain.

Men's Team 1967-1971

• Inducted as Members: 2022
• The team included the late Richard Carter, Ken Hiscoe, Geoff Hunt and Cam Nancarrow.
• The team was formidable during their reign from 1967 to 1971 and did not drop a single match on their path to success. The events taking place in Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand respectively did not pose any difficulties for this side as their undefeated status was kept intact.