Champions, challengers, and a perfect season on the 2025/26 SDA Pro Tour
When Sam Khalifa and Chris Callis lifted the Kellner Cup at The Racquet and Tennis Club in April, they did more than win the SDA Pro Tour’s flagship event. They closed out the first undefeated men’s season since Manek Mathur, becoming the first team to defend the Kellner Cup since 2013/2015 and writing themselves into the record books. But the trophy lift was only the final image of a season that, across nine months, gave squash doubles fans new champions, redrawn rivalries, debut venues, and a generation of rising talent ready to take the game to its next chapter.
A season that opened on every note
The 2025/26 campaign began in Philadelphia, where Georgina Stoker and Lauren West, the founders of the Philadelphia Women’s Open, flipped the previous year’s final to defeat defending champions Kayley Leonard and Maria Elena Ubina. A few nights later, on the legendary high-ceilinged court at The Racquet & Tennis Club, Adham Madi and Marwan Tarek became the first all-Egyptian duo to capture an SDA ranking title. The men’s tour then headed west for the first top-tier ranking event ever played in Minnesota, where Josh Hughes and Matt Henderson stunned top seeds Ashley Davies and Cameron Pilley 15-13 in the fifth. Within the first month, three different men’s teams had hoisted trophies, a fitting preview of how unpredictable the early season would be.
A women’s tour with three No. 1s and one defining rivalry
If the men’s field was eventually defined by one team’s dominance, the women’s tour told the opposite story. Three different players passed through World No. 1 over the course of the season. Stoker climbed first on the back of her Philadelphia and Maryland Club titles. Leonard took the top spot in October after she and Nikki Todd ran through the NYC Open at the University Club of New York. By the time the tour reached the altitude of the Hashim Khan Championships in Denver, Todd herself had risen to No. 1 after she and Stoker swept through the draw without dropping a game.
Threaded through it all was the rivalry that came to define the women’s season: Leonard and Ubina against Stoker and her partners. They met six times across the calendar, Philadelphia, the Heights Casino, MFS Boston, the North American Open, US Nationals, and the inaugural Palm Beach Open, and produced four classics, including a Boston final in which Leonard and Ubina recovered from 2-0 and 7-1 down to win in five, and a North American Open decider in Greenwich where Stoker and Todd erased a 7-2 fifth-game deficit before Todd finished the match with a perfectly weighted straight drop. The season closed in Los Angeles at the LocalWorld Open, where rising stars Rachel Mashek and Olivia Walsh broke through for the biggest title of their careers, signaling that the next wave of contenders has arrived.
Khalifa and Callis: a perfect season
On the men’s side, the storyline crystallized at the RC Pro Series in St. Louis, where Khalifa and Callis won the season’s first $50,000 event. From there they simply did not lose. The Big Apple Open at the New York Athletic Club fell on a simultaneous game ball/match ball at the end of a 22-minute fourth game. The Jim Bentley Cup at the Cambridge Club, the MFS Boston Pro-Am, the North American Open, the David C. Johnson Memorial, each tournament added another title to the run. By the time the pair arrived at the Kellner Cup in mid April, a final-round rematch of the 2024 edition awaited. They left no doubt, closing out James Stout and Scott Arnold 15-9, 15-12, 15-7. Callis added an eighth title to his season alongside Zac Alexander at the Diamond State Open in December, the win that lifted him to World No. 1.
Stout and Arnold deserve their own paragraph. The longtime World No. 1 partnership reached the final of essentially every event they entered together, from the Will Hartigan Memorial Big Apple Open through MFS Boston, the NAO, and Kellner. They pushed Khalifa and Callis to the brink at the Bentley Cup in Toronto and again in the MFS Boston Pro-Am final before falling short. Among major SDA titles, the Kellner Cup is now the one trophy missing from Stout’s cabinet, and that absence will fuel a great deal of squash the next two seasons.
The next wave
Beneath the headline rivalry, a new generation of men spent the season building toward 2026/27. Daelum Mawji and Charles Culhane, former Princeton and Cornell stars, went from a quarterfinal upset of Mike Ferreira and Pilley at the RC Pro Series to a first major final at Sleepy Hollow, then captured back-to-back titles at the Tavern Club Open and Buffalo Club Open to close the men’s calendar. At the Kellner Cup, they saved nine match balls in a round of 16 comeback against Sergio Martin and Khamal Cumberbatch. Adham Madi continued to climb as well, while in Pittsburgh, rising Canadian star and Western University senior Griffin Manley, partnering Cole Osborne, became the youngest player ever to win a full SDA event. On the women’s side, the competitive balance created opportunities for new teams to emerge. Rachel Mashek and Olivia Walsh steadily built momentum throughout the season, consistently challenging higher seeds before closing the year with a breakthrough victory in Los Angeles at the LocalWorld Open.
A tour that kept growing
Off the trophy table, the tour reached new corners of the map. The Securian Financial Minnesota Open became the first top-tier men’s ranking event in the state. The Palm Beach Open presented by Wingstop debuted under tournament director Narelle Krizek and immediately drew PSA and Team USA star Amanda Sobhy back to the doubles court. The Cynwyd Challenger introduced the first women’s challenger event in tour history, won by Madeline Perry and Lujan Palacios. And in Palm Beach, Seanna Keating and her daughter Ella Baldwin became the first mother-daughter pairing ever to compete at an SDA event.
Geographically, whilst still Tri-State-heavy, the tour felt more balanced than in years past. New York and its neighbors still anchored the calendar, but strong events in the Midwest, Florida, and beyond meant players spent more of the season on the road, and more clubs and fans got to see top-level doubles up close. That kind of spread is good news for the sport.
There were moments to honor along the way. Adam Bews, who built squash in the Midwest and hosted that historic Minnesota event, played his final SDA tournament at the RC Pro Series. John Russell collected his 24th SDA title at the Tompkins Cup. Cameron Pilley was presented with the inaugural Hartigan Cup as the 2025 SDA Men’s Sportsman of the Year. And at the MFS Boston Pro-Am, 82-year-old Thomas M. Poor received US Squash’s President’s Cup in front of the doubles community he helped build.
What comes next
Looking back across the season, the picture is bigger than any one champion. Khalifa and Callis set a near-impossible bar on the men’s side. Stoker, Todd, Leonard, and Ubina rotated the women’s No. 1 ranking and turned every meeting into an event. A new wave, Mawji and Culhane, Mashek and Walsh, Madi, Manley, proved they belong at the top of draws. New venues opened their doors, new partnerships made history, and the sport said meaningful goodbyes. If 2025/26 was the season Sam Khalifa and Chris Callis built the bar, 2026/27 will be the season everyone else tries to reach it. On current form, the chase will be every bit as compelling as the run that started it.