World Masters providing momentum to Squash

Rob Donaghue had barely stepped off the court when he started talking about his next match.

For the Squash Australia CEO, competing at the 2026 World Squash Masters Championships in Perth was a very different role to the one he had occupied for much of the past two years.

Donaghue has been thinking about venues, courts, competitors, logistics, partners and the thousands of moving parts required to deliver an international championship.

But for a few thrilling minutes, he was also one of the competitors.

“I would like to go and have another game right now,” Donaghue said, shortly after completing his second match of the tournament.

“That’s the great thing about the sport. You get a good, sharp, physical exercise there for the period of time you’re on court and it makes you want for more once you get off.”

More than 900 competitors from Australia and around the world have descended on Perth for the 2026 World Squash Masters Championships, competing across 23 courts and three venues. 

Among them is a feature glass court at Karrinyup Shopping Centre, bringing international-level squash directly to a public audience and showcasing the sport outside its traditional venues.

For Donaghue, the week is about much more than results.

“I think that’s the great thing about Squash, it’s a real community,” he said.

“You want to play hard and compete when you’re on the court, but when you’re off the court, you want to help each other. And it’s a real community feel like that.”

His second match was against a player from Sydney’s Dural Squash Club, with members of the opposition’s group offering him advice between games.

It was a small moment, but one that captured the culture the Masters Championships is celebrating.

That sense of belonging is one of squash’s greatest strengths and increasingly one of its greatest opportunities.

The Masters Championships features competitors aged from 35 through to 85 and beyond, offering a powerful demonstration that squash can remain part of a person’s life for decades.

“Squash is a game for life,” Donaghue said.

“You can keep competing even at an international level in the world championships, right up to the age of 85 plus.”

For some, that means chasing another title. For others, it is about a weekly pennant match, staying active or simply catching up with friends.

Across the Masters tournament, those motivations coexist.

“There’s lifelong friendships that have been forged through this sport,” Donaghue said.

“There’s examples every day of people catching up at the courts, from tournaments past or from their involvement in the sport many years ago.”

That community is also at the heart of the sport’s next generation.

Squash Australia’s Squash Stars program is helping introduce the sport to children through activations, giving them their first taste of the game before encouraging them towards local clubs and competition.

“Fundamentally, it’s hitting the ball against a wall and we all do it at home in the backyard,” he said.

“We want that to be known as Squash.”

The ambition is to turn that first hit into something more, a pathway into clubs, competition, friendships and potentially a lifetime in the sport.

And there are signs that the opportunity is growing.

Squash is benefiting from what Donaghue describes as a broader renaissance in racquet sports, with the popularity of paddle and pickleball introducing new audiences to racquet-based activities.

“We’re finding people are rekindling their love for Squash through paddle and pickleball,” he said.

“I think it’s a real positive for our sport, but more broadly for racquet sports here in this country.”

With squash set to return to the Olympic program at LA28, and Brisbane 2032 on the horizon, the sport has an opportunity to reach new audiences and inspire a new generation of players.

The World Squash Masters Championships provides another part of that story.

For two years, Donaghue and the wider Squash Australia team have been working towards making the Perth event a success. The decision to bring the championship to Western Australia was also a recognition of the work being done locally to grow the sport.

“Squash WA has done a wonderful job here,” Donaghue said.

“They’ve got really strong juniors here, so that’s that next generation coming through, but have also fostered those who’ve had the lifelong involvement in sport.”

Donaghue believes Western Australia, Perth and the City of Stirling provide the ideal backdrop.

“It’s beautiful. It’s what we want to show the international players,  everything that is Australia.”

And then there is the glass court at Karrinyup.

The court is more than an impressive centrepiece. It is a deliberate attempt to take squash to people who may never otherwise walk into a squash centre.

The impact was already being felt.

“Even if we get one of them out of this tournament, it’s been a success,” Donaghue said.

“That’s one new player that we’ve gained out of that exposure of having the court there at Karrinyup.”

It is a simple measure of success, but perhaps the most important one.

For the 900-plus competitors, success means great matches, reconnecting with old friends, making new ones and experiencing Perth and Australia.

For Squash Australia, it is also about leaving something behind. A child discovering squash at Karrinyup, a former player rediscovering the sport, a spectator watching an international match and deciding to pick up a racquet.

A young player seeing the world’s best and beginning to imagine what might be possible.

The Masters Championships brings all of those stories together.

And for Donaghue, there is something particularly fitting about experiencing it from both sides of the glass, as the person helping deliver the event and as a player who simply wants to get back on court.

“I think the week is going to be so important for the sport, both here in Australia and globally,” he said.

For a sport built around a ball repeatedly returning to the wall, squash is once again gathering momentum.

And in Perth, that momentum is being felt on the courts, in the clubs, in the shopping centre and in the growing optimism about where the sport can go next.