First published in Squash Player 25.1
There’s a strange, persistent fantasy that clings to the back of the minds of many armchair athletes. Watching the world’s best compete, these dreamers convince themselves that, given a little more time or a change in circumstances, they could have been at the top.
Shortly after Paris 2024 finished, a British survey showed that nearly 27% of people believed they could qualify for the 2028 Olympics if they started training now. For some, the fantasy lingers. For others, it fades.
But for Cory McCartney, that fantasy wasn’t a wistful daydream. It became his reality.
McCartney was already 19 years old when he first picked up a squash racket. In a sport where the pathway to professional ranks is usually laid out in childhood, with years of coaching and junior competition, McCartney is an outlier - someone who wasn’t supposed to make it.
Yet, in 2023, the Toronto native had fought his way to a career-high world ranking of no.146.
His journey, improbable and defiant, is a testament to what is possible when ambition meets an almost irrational persistence.
To understand McCartney’s rise, it helps to start where his sporting life began: not with squash, but with gymnastics.
“I was a national-level gymnast,” McCartney says. “From the time I was five until I was 16, I trained 24 hours a week.”
His goal was clear: representing Canada at the Olympics. But fate, as it often does, had different plans.
“I fell badly and herniated a disc in my back. That was the end of my gymnastics career,” McCartney says.
“Gymnastics is a young man’s sport, so once you know you’re not going to make it to the Olympics, there’s nowhere else to go,” he explains. His entire life had revolved around training, and suddenly, that structure was gone.
Like many young athletes, McCartney found himself standing in the wreckage of a dream and was left with a void.
He turned to other sports, looking for something to fill the gap gymnastics had left. He tried his hand at rugby and basketball, competing at a “decent” high school standard. But it wasn’t until he began university that squash entered his life.
What began as casual games with his father and brother quickly became something more.
“It was just something fun at first,” McCartney says. “But I got the bug immediately.
"My brother and I then started watching the Jonathan Power training videos - 'Above The Tin' - and that's how we learned. We never really got any formal coaching."
The fun turned serious when McCartney realised how challenging squash truly was.
“We were good athletes,” he says, “but there were these old guys at the University of Toronto who would kick our ass every time we played.”
It was the first time McCartney had experienced the frustration of losing in a sport, and it sparked something in him.
“We just couldn’t figure out how to beat them,” he says, laughing. “It was a totally different kind of challenge.”
That challenge quickly became an obsession.
“Squash has this mental grind that you don’t find in a lot of other sports,” McCartney says.
“I love the skill set, but you get that in a lot of racket sports, you could argue, but I think what separates squash is that real physical and mental grind.”
He likens it to his earlier days in gymnastics, where mental toughness was just as important as physical strength.
“In squash, you’re in the same space as your opponent. It’s a battle, and the only way you win is by digging deeper than they can. There’s a masochistic pleasure from coming through a five-game battle and knowing that you managed to dig deeper - I love that side of the game.
"Then it was a case of right time, right place, because the National Squash Academy opened up in Toronto while I was still at university. I had been playing for a couple years, so was probably a decent 'B' level player, but the Academy meant I was able to see the pro players - like Gary Waite and Jamie Nicholls and Jonathan Power - and they were very generous with advice for my brother and I.
"We also got to play with some top 100 level players, who gave us advice and it all started to go upwards from then."
In just a few years, McCartney went from picking up a squash racket for the first time to competing in tournaments. His trajectory was unusual, to say the least.
“I picked it up when I was 19/20 and within a couple of years, I was winning local and regional A-draws,” he says.
The rapid rise through the local ranks led to McCartney considering something he never could have imagined: going pro.
By this time, McCartney had completed a degree in neuroscience - a field he had once thought would define his career. But as the allure of squash grew, McCartney finished his degree and he found himself at a crossroads.
“I had spent all these years training to become a neuroscientist,” he says, “but the more I played squash, the more I realised that I didn’t want to spend my life in a lab and I think when you go down that rabbit hole of sports psychology, which I had done so much with studying neuroscience, when you get a sport that is so heavily reliant on the psychology side, I think that's what really got me into it. So I wanted to see how far I could go in this sport.”
It was a fellow squash player, Kale Wilson, who pushed McCartney to take the leap.
“He convinced me,” McCartney says.
“He said, ‘You’re playing well enough. Why not give it a try?’”
And so, against the advice of his family and friends, McCartney turned down the path of professional squash - a path that would prove to be anything but easy.
Life on the professional squash tour is far from the glamorous image often associated with elite sports.
“It’s difficult - it is a grind,” McCartney says bluntly. “The lower-level tournaments don’t pay much, and you’re constantly balancing the need to earn money with the desire to improve your game.”
For McCartney, a life-altering solution appeared when he took a job at a small squash facility where he could coach and still travel to compete.
“I happened to fall into a job at a small squash facility, where they were willing to have me come in as a traveling pro. They were happy to have me on board as a coach, but one that travelled to play events - so that allowed me to make enough money to pay rent and live - so I could survive.
"That enabled me to go on the tour - that was kind of my big introduction, but playing full-time was never an option.”
The reality of the professional squash tour is one of constant hustle.
“You’re playing five- and ten-thousand-dollar events, traveling around the world, staying in budget hotels, and hoping you can break even,” McCartney says. “It’s tough.
"It’s humbling. You’re putting everything into this, and there are moments when you wonder if it’s all worth it.”
Every match, every tournament, no matter the level, is a battle both on and off the court.
“Everyone thought I was crazy - quitting my full-time job to play squash as a pro after only playing the game for a few years,” McCartney says.
His family was skeptical, but his conviction never wavered. He knew he had to give himself a shot.
“I told myself, ‘You’ve got one shot to do something like this…why not try?’ The allure of that challenge is so strong for me, I wanted to, and still want to, just get the most I can out of myself and see as far as I can go - I don’t want to leave with questions hanging around about whether I could have gotten more from myself.”
In 2019, his breakthrough came at the Nash Cup in London, Ontario. After battling through the qualifiers, McCartney found himself facing Ireland’s Stuart Hadden, a far more experienced player. The match was a gruelling five-set affair, lasting 79 minutes.
“It was a battle,” McCartney recalls. “There was diving, calls going back and forth, but I managed to win 12-10 in the fifth.”
That victory was a turning point for McCartney. “That match made me feel like I belonged on tour,” he says. “When you start late in a sport, it’s hard to feel like you fit in.
“When you’ve only been playing for a few years and you’re on tour with people who’ve been doing this since they were kids, there’s this lingering feeling that you don’t deserve to be there - so there was always a little bit of, almost imposter-syndrome at the beginning.
“But that win gave me the confidence to keep going - it sort of justified the sacrifices in many ways.”
But even as McCartney began to find his footing, the challenges kept coming. The COVID-19 pandemic put the professional squash tour on hold, and for McCartney, the timing couldn’t have been worse.
“I was 28, and I had finally gotten a couple of years of experience on tour,” he says. “Then everything stopped.”
The enforced break was more difficult than he expected. “It took me a lot longer than I thought to get back to playing well,” McCartney admits.
Yet, through all the setbacks, McCartney’s love for squash has remained unwavering. Even after sustaining an MCL injury at the end of last season, McCartney made the decision to renew his membership with the PSA (Professional Squash Association) for another year.
“I thought about hanging it up,” he says, “but I still love the game.
"As long as I’m healthy and competitive, I’ll keep going to see how far I can go - I feel like I can push past that 140 in the world and be competing at that level, or better.”
Now 32, McCartney sits at No. 185 in the world rankings. His journey, stitched together through persistence and passion, is a rare example of what can happen when a person refuses to give up on their dreams.
He regularly shares his story with the juniors he coaches, many of whom worry that starting late will put them at a disadvantage.
“I tell them all the time - it’s never too late,” McCartney says.
“A lot of these kids feel like they’ve missed the boat, especially when they see others who’ve been playing since they were 10. But I’m living proof that it’s not about when you start, it’s about how hard you work once you get started.
“I didn’t start until I was 19, and I’ve made it this far. They can do it too.
“So there’s hope for all the dreamers out there,” McCartney says. “You’ve got one shot to do something like this…why not try?”
