Squash World Mourns The Passing Of Gul Khan, 1948-2018 by Rob Dinerman
photo USOpenSquash
Dateline May 8th
--- It is with great sadness that we at DSR inform our readers that Gul
Khan, one of the most popular and free-spirited members of the Khan
clan that had such a presence on the World Professional Squash
Association (WPSA) hardball tour during its glorious run from the late
1970’s until the early 1990’s, suffered a severe stroke on the evening
of April 30th and died early this past Sunday, two months before what
would have been his 70th birthday in July.
Gul and his older brother Mohibullah (universally known as Mo)
were nephews of seven-time British Open champion Hashim Khan (one of
whose sisters married Hashim’s childhood friend Safarullah Khan) and
first cousins of Hashim’s sons Sharif, Aziz and Liaqat, whose name was
Americanized to Charlie. All five of them appeared at almost every tour
stop on the pro hardball circuit, whose No. 1 ranking Sharif held for
more than a decade. A winner of the Pakistan Junior Championship during
his teenage years, Gul moved to the United States during the 1970’s,
sponsored by Mo, who at the time was the head pro at the Harvard Club
of Boston, a position that President John Kennedy had helped to
arrange. After serving as Mo’s assistant for a few years, Gul was
offered the head pro position at the University Club of Boston, which
he held until the early 1980’s before moving to New York, where he had
stints as the head pro first at the Manhattan Squash Club on West 42nd
Street and then at the Park Place Squash Club downtown. Towards the end
of that decade, Gul relocated once more, this time to Cleveland, where
he spent the last nearly three decades of his life and where he was the
pro at the Cleveland Athletic Club and later the Tavern Club.
At each of those venues, Gul’s charismatic, larger than life
personality, contagious laugh and generous spirit earned him numerous
supporters, admirers and fans, including famous figures as disparate as
Senator Ted Kennedy, Patriots owner Bob Kraft and the famous artist
Frank Stella, all of whom took squash lessons from Gul and became part
of his large circle of friends. His stylish, crowd-pleasing game,
tremendous racquet skill, speed, power, deception and flair for the
dramatic made for captivating entertainment, and this combination of
traits caused even the top players, including Sharif (whom Gul defeated
at an event in Saucon Valley during Sharif’s prime), to regard Gul as
one of their most challenging opponents. He advanced to many WPSA
quarterfinals and a few semis, and was consistently ranked in the WPSA
top 20. Gul also was an outstanding right-wall doubles player and the
winner of three of the top doubles tournaments on the tour, namely the
Heights Casino Doubles with his brother Mo in ’73 and with Peter Briggs
in ’84 and the Cambridge Club Doubles in Toronto with Mo in ’74. In
both 1999 and 2000, Gul teamed with cousin Gulmast to win the U. S.
National Doubles 50-and-over crown, a dual achievement that Gulmast
attributed to “outstanding coaching advice from my cousin and good
friend. Cheers to Gul!”
In addition, Gul was on the US team that played in a world team
championship tournament sponsored by Pakistan International Airlines
during the mid-1970’s, and he also earned a spot (along with teammates
Mark Talbott, Larry Hilbert and Ted Gross) on the American team that
competed in Karachi in the Hashim Khan Open in November 1980. This was
the tournament in which Jahangir Khan, still a teenager at the time,
had his first breakthrough wins, over Mohibullah Khan (a different
person from Gul’s brother) in the semis and Qamar Zaman in the final,
thereby launching a record-shattering career highlighted by an all-time
record 10 consecutive British Opens. During this latter visit, Gul’s
teammates noticed that he took on an even more relaxed and mellow
persona than he normally displayed in the States, wearing traditional
Pakistani garb and clearly luxuriating in being back in his native
homeland. In light of the foregoing, it is perhaps not surprising that,
per his oft-expressed wishes, he will be buried in Pakistan.
Gul was a compelling personality and beloved figure, and
he will be sorely missed by his legion of friends and fans throughout
the squash world. Sharif and his wife, Karen, may have best expressed
what so many felt upon learning the sad news of Gul’s passing when they
wrote, “Gul had a heart of gold. He lived large, he knew politicians,
business wheeler-dealers, lawyers, baseball stars, famous artists, and
they knew him. But he also knew the local guys at the ‘Cheers’ bar, the
maintenance guy in his apartment building and the people who needed a
helping hand on his block in Cleveland. We will miss him, and life may
be a little less exciting without him, but we will never forget him.”
