Nicol Ann David (35) has been voted as the Greatest Of All Time by squash fans all over the world. According to the Professional Squash Association website PSA World Tour, thousands of squash fans from all around the world have voted during the month of August to crown our Malaysian champion as the greatest player in Squash history.
What’s more, the PSA World Tour website writes that the Penang-born superstar is the first player of either gender to win the World Junior title twice!
Here is a quick highlight on her achievements thus far:
109 – World No.1 for 109 consecutive months from 2006 – 2015
81 – PSA winning titles, with a total of 102 PSA event finals
8 – World Championship titles, racking up a 56-match unbeaten spell
5 – British Open titles
4 – Asian Games gold medals
2 – Commonwealth Games gold medals
1 – Greatest of All Time – Nicol Ann David
The youngest person ever to receive a ‘Datukship’ in Penang
(Source here)
Childhood & Early Career
Born in Penang on 26 August 1983, Nicol is the daughter of Desmond David, who was an engineer, and Anne Marie David, who was a school teacher. As a child, she was interested in mathematics and she aspired to be an engineer like her father.
She started playing squash as a pastime at the age of 5. But by the age of 8, she was enrolled in a proper coaching setup. She was soon called up to represent her states Penang in the 1992 National Junior Interstate Championship.
In that competition Nicol surprised everyone by winning the silver medal in the U-16 category. In 1994 she was able to win her first international titles in the form of the Scottish Junior Open U-12 and the Hong Kong U-13 tournaments.
Professional Career
She was a great talent that had the potential of becoming the one of the top players in the world. In 1999 she proved her skills by winning the Women’s World Junior Squash Championships at the age of 15. In that competition she went on to beat three players who were placed in the top 20 rankings in the world.
She was just a schoolgirl who went on to defeat other experienced players with relative ease. This performance made headlines throughout the world of sport and made Nicol an overnight star. In 2001, she went on to win the World Junior Championship competition for the second time.
In the year 2000, Nicol turned professional by joining the WISPA. Within the first month on the tour Nicol was able to win her first title. In the Savcor Finnish open, she defeated Salma Shabana to win her first title. This was only the first of the dozens of trophies that were set to follow.
By the year 2005, she had become such a dominant player on the tour that she lost only 2 matches throughout the whole year. She won World Open and the Malaysian Open. But her greatest achievement was the winning of the British Open, being the first Asian to do so.
Her dominance also got her the World No.1 ranking in August 2006 which she would not relinquish for the next six years. In 2006 she continued her string of impressive performances by defending the World Open, Malaysia Open, British open. Additionally she won the Penang Open, Qatar Airways Open Challenge, Hong Kong Open, etc.
Discussion about this post