About
Paul Coll was born in Greymouth, New Zealand – a town with a population of 13,500 – on 9th May 1992.
From a very young age, he was passionate about all sports playing Rugby, Hockey, Basketball, Football, Golf and Squash. It wasn’t until the age of 15, after being selected for the New Zealand Junior Worlds squad, that he turned his focus to Squash.
In 2010 he was selected for the World Junior Team to compete in Quito, Ecuador that finished in 6th place – a very good finish for New Zealand at that time.
A year later he went on to university to study Architecture and also start on the PSA Professional circuit. After one year studying he decided to follow his passion of squash and go full time on the PSA World Tour.
In 2016 he established himself on the PSA World Tour winning the Australian Open from an unseeded position. A year later he went from qualifying all the way through to winning the Channel VAS $100,000 event in London – cementing himself inside the world top 20.
He made history in September 2017 as he became no. 10 in the PSA World Rankings. He is only the fourth Kiwi to break the top 10 in the world, the ones before him including former world champion and world No. 2 Ross Norman.
The 2019-2020 was Coll’s best on the PSA World Tour, failing to reach the last four at just two events. He began with victory at the Open de France – Nantes presented by Tailor Capital, taking down Joel Makin at the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne. This was followed by a semi-final appearance at the CIB Egyptian Squash Open, before he reached the final of the PSA Men’s World Championships. He then led the New Zealand side at the WSF Men’s World Team Squash Championships in Washington, D.C. that December, with the Kiwi quartet coming in 5th place, which was their best finish at the tournament since 1993.
Back on the individual stage, and Coll made it to the final of his last two events before the COVID-19 enforced suspension of the Tour. He lost out to Tarek Momen in the final of the Troilus Canada Cup, before narrowly missing out on a first major title at the Windy City Open presented by the Walter Family.
The Kiwi No.1 reached the semi-finals of the Manchester Open on his return to the professional sport following the COVID-19 suspension. He then went on to become the first Kiwi to reach the top four in the World Rankings since Ross Norman, thanks to reaching the final of the Qatar Classic.