Henri Raoul Marie Salaun died on Wednesday 4 June at the age of eighty-eight. He fell down the stairs at his home in Needham and never recovered. He was one of the legends of squash and one of the last links to pre-Second World War squash in America.

Sixty years ago Salaun won the 1954 U.S. Open, beating Hashim Khan in the final.  Along with Diehl Mateer, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in February 1958, the only time a squash player has graced an SI cover; Salaun would have also been on the cover of Life after the U.S. Open in 1954, but he ended up beating Hashim in the finals and Life decided to bury the story in the back of the magazine.

With amazing retrieving skills, Salaun won four U.S. national singles titles. He lost in the finals a further five times, including the 1951 finals which ended on a fifth-game, 14-14 double championship point.  (He also won six Canadian national singles titles, the most anyone did until Jonathon Power came along.)

Salaun was one of the greatest masters players in history, winning twenty-three age-group U.S. national titles in hardball: six veterans (40+), five 50+, four 60+, four 65+ and four 70+. In 2000 Salaun was a part of the inaugural class of inductees into the U.S. Squash  Hall of Fame.

Outside of Gaultier, he might be the top French-born player ever—at age fourteen he had to flee Brittany. He landed up in Boston. When I did a profile on Salaun in 1997 for Squash News, I tracked down his first squash coach, Henry Poor, who had introduced Salaun to the game at Deerfield. Salaun asked Poor if they could play alone for a week to get started. They did and after a second week of matches, Salaun was number one on the team.

He stayed in the game the rest of his life. He played at Wesleyan. He played at the University Club of Boston, winning the club championship eighteen straight years. Last month he attended the Massachusetts SRA’s annual dinner at the U Club. He won more than 250 squash tournaments in his seventy-year career (he also was a great tennis player and even played at Wimbledon during the Second World War in an armed-services tournament). Five foot six, he succeeded through guile and hard work rather than pure strength.

He ran his own sporting goods business, working until the last days of his life.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1001787/index.htm