Sebastian Florin Iuga has a Squash Levels rating of just 1,048 — but as his opponents will attest, what he lacks in court craft he certainly makes up for in enthusiasm.
Last week, Squash Levels published a 'Spotify Wrapped'-style summary of the most eye-catching statistics from the 640,009 matches recorded on its database in 2025.
With 204 match results logged against his name on Squash Levels in 2025 (and several more to add by the end of the year), Sebastian took the title of the most active competitive squash player in the world.
For comparison, men's world no.1 Mostafa Asal played 62 matches on the PSA Tour in 2025 — under a third of the number played by Sebastian, a 42-year-old Romanian-born lorry driver from Grays, Essex.
As you might imagine, there is something of a story behind Sebastian's rabid zest for competitive squash.
He only began playing under two years ago and started entering graded tournaments straight away as a complete beginner. Since then, his Squash Levels rating has risen from the early 100s to just over a thousand.
He has competed in virtually all of the graded tournaments organised by CM Stringers supremo Joe Magor at venues all over the country, as well as several of Millie Tomlinson's Graded Squash Tour events and Match Point Squash tournaments, led by Cai Younger.
On these amateur circuits, Sebastian has became renowned for his warm-up routine, which involves backflips, forward rolls, cartwheels and the splits. He also has an incredible appetite, packing in several meals between matches.
Often playing in two different grades in one tournament, he regularly clocks up eight matches in a day. Although these are best of three, he often asks whether the finals can be best of five!
Sebastian records videos of his matches and some of the highlights demonstrate extraordinary feats of retrieval, including Paul Coll-style full-length dives, as well as a somewhat unorthodox technique.
He plays at Bannatyne Health Club in Chafford Hundred, Essex, but there's no team squash at his club. All his recorded matches on Squash Levels are in tournaments.
Squash Player tracked Sebastian down and asked him about his incredible record. His replies were enigmatic and yet compelling.
"In sport I need energy from my muscles combined with my mind," he said. "With the power of mind and body together, in this sport I feel like I succeed at this kind of level to feel very well.
"For me, being part of tournaments feels like my dream come true... I want to send this message to all the people who will read this story; love your body, feel it and move it!"
Sebastian has played lots of different sports but his participation was "interrupted by a few scenes" in his life that he doesn't expand upon. Squash was something of a saviour.
He said: "I got into squash because I was feeling dead, and slowly I felt like my life was coming back, as I was being encouraged by lots of people who are playing this sport.
"I realised that if I quit sport, I'm dying, so why feel like that when I can feel alive [on the squash court]!
"What I love most is that feeling when we are succeeding in controlling our body in that way to manage a good game. I'm loving competitions, they are so exciting. So long as we are trying to take care of our body, I think and believe the universe is taking care of us."
Sebastian thanks Joe Magor for organising the circuit of CM Stringers graded tournaments where he has learned to play the game.
Having watched Sebastian play many times, Joe observed: "It's quite staggering at times. The ball just keeps coming back!
"His warm-up routine of cartwheels and roly polys gets a lot of the other players very curious and quite often makes him late for matches!
"He enters so many of our events and a couple of times he's played in two grades in one day. I'm pretty certain whoever is in second place on the Squash Levels list has only played half as many matches as Sebastian. He is quite a character."
