On October 11, 2018 Yusuf Khan died in Seattle at the age of eighty-seven. He was laid to rest that weekend. A memorial service will be held at 3:00pm on Saturday, November 3 at the Overlake Golf & Country Club in Medina, Washington.
Khan was born in what is now Pakistan in 1931. He learned squash as a teenager at a local British army base, playing on roofless courts. He became the champion of India. In 1957 he moved to Mumbai to coach at the Cricket Club of India, where he mentored numerous players including 2018 U.S. Squash Hall of Fame inductee Anil Nayar.
In 1968 he moved to Seattle to coach tennis and then squash. Except for a two-year stint in Portland, Khan presided over squash in Seattle for the next half century. He worked, ran and even built his own squash clubs, including the Seattle Tennis Club, Tennis World, Seattle Racquets Club, Central Park, SAC, Bellevue Club and the Pro Sports Club. Tennis World, which he opened in 1975, had one of the first softball courts in the country. Khan was an accomplished player, winning many singles and doubles tournaments around the continent including the prestigious Boston Open in 1970 and reaching world No.3.
Khan made the Pacific Northwest a hotbed of squash. He helped host many regional tournaments, as well as the three National Singles, the 1989 U.S. Open and the 1999 Women’s World Championship. He taught thousands of players, including his daughters Shabana Khan and Latasha Khan, both of whom won U.S. National Singles titles and reached the top twenty-five in the world.
