Angela Smith (squash player)

Angela Smith (born 3 July 1953 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) is a retired professional English squash player: Smith was one of the world's top ranked squash players from 1979 to 1990. Smith was also the first female squash player to turn professional and widely recognized for changing the face of women's squash by doing so.

Her first overseas position was as squash coach at the prestigious Vertical Club in Manhattan, New York, where Vitas Gerulaitis was the tennis pro. Her contract there was said to be the most lucrative of its kind in the sport at that time. There she coached many famous personalities of the time such as Jackie Kennedy, the widow of the US president. Following her successful period in the States and her significant input into the Women's Sport Foundation of America, Smith took up an even greater challenge in Nassau, Bahamas where she took squash from the realms of an expat sport to one embraced by locals. She was instrumental in Shell sponsoring the squash programme and several of the juniors that Smith coached later went on to play on the world circuit themselves. Following her six years in Nassau, she was based in Barcelona, Spain at the Can Melich club where she was again a great success, helping to organise amongst other events the European Junior championships. She also coached and helped further develop the game in Hong Kong, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent and Kenya to name a few of the countries. All this whilst jetting to and from the UK and world circuits to compete in the necessary events to allow her to represent her country and also maintain her place in the world rankings. Indeed, after Smith's immediate success as a professional, making a career from tournament play rather than just coaching, Sue Cogswell followed suit at the end of 1980 and the UK women's squash game was quickly forced to become "open"; the rest of the world swiftly followed suit and today's lady professionals owe a debt to Angela particularly and those brave enough to join her in those early days namely the Australians Sue Newman, Barbara Wall and Lyle Hubinger.

Smith was coached by Nasrullah Khan, who also coached Jonah Barrington. Angela enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top reaching a ranking of 2 in the UK upon her first entry into the list. She reached the semifinals of the British Open Squash Championships eight times, and won the Spanish, Portuguese, Canadian, US, Norwegian, Israel, (a record six times) and Bermuda Opens. She was British champion in 1976.

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