Mark Talbott arrived on The Farm in 2004 as the director of a newly-established squash program. In the two decades since, he has continued to develop Stanford into a top contender, producing seven All-Americans and 14 All-America honors, while also directing a program focused on community outreach and junior player development.
More recently, Talbott has led an emphatic turnaround for the Cardinal since going 0-11 in the 2021-22 season. The 2023-24 squad finished fifth in the country, with Talbott earning Mid-Atlantic Squash Conference Coach of the Year honors. In the team’s second season competing in the MASC, the Cardinal won the conference behind a commanding 7-2 over then-No. 5 Virginia.
Stanford fell to then-No. 2 Princeton in the second round of the CSA National Championships, before rattling off consecutive wins over Virginia and No. 4 Penn to wrap up the fifth-place finish. Team honors from the turnaround season also included a Chaffee Award for Team Sportsmanship, given annually to a women's team coach whose team has demonstrated the qualities of sportsmanship, teamwork, character and improvement. To add to the accolades, the team earned CSA Most Improved Team honors.
Talbott guided the Cardinal to 11th in 2022-23, and was instrumental in Stanford gaining conference affiliation for the first time in program history prior to the season.
Talbott has guided the program to nine top-six finishes, including four-straight from 2016-20, with a best of third in 2019. That season, Stanford earned a 5-4 victory over Princeton to secure third at the CSA National Championships. Stanford produced a pair of program-defining milestones: a 5-4 victory over Yale, winning an opening-round CSA match for the first time in school history, and the victory over Princeton was its second in 16 attempts and first win over the Tigers since a 6-3 victory in 2009.
Stanford was also the 2019 recipient of the Chaffee Award for the first time since 2013.
Talbott was honored with the Callahan Sportsmanship Award at the fourth annual Character in Sports Day at the 2017 U.S. Open Squash Championships. The award is named in honor of Robert W. Callahan, the Hall of Fame Princeton coach who died in 2015 and was widely renowned for instilling a profound sense of sportsmanship in his players.
Inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class in 2000, Talbott is arguably the greatest squash player in American history and enjoyed an illustrious career as a professional thanks to a 12-year reign as the No. 1 ranked professional in North America. An eight-time World Professional Squash Association Player of the Year and three-time Olympic Athlete of the Year, Talbott captained the first USA Team to compete in the Pan Am Games in 1995, earned the Sharif Khan Award for Sportsmanship in 1991 and won the USSRA President’s Cup in 1989. Talbott won 70 percent of the tournaments he entered, and was the World Hardball champion and American Softball champion.
Talbott’s major championships, among more than 250 career tournament victories, include five North American Opens, six World Professional Championships, three Canadian Opens, two U.S. Opens, three Boston Opens, three S.L. Green Softball Nationals and a pair of North American Open Doubles titles. Talbott was featured in numerous magazines during his illustrious playing career, among them Gentlemen’s Quarterly, New Yorker, Esquire and twice in Sports Illustrated. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2011 World Squash Awards.
In addition to competition, Talbott is dedicated to developing the next generation of players. In 1991, he established the Talbott Squash Academy, one of the first National Training Centers for the U.S. Squash Association. The Academy has trained thousands of students during the summer in Newport, R.I., and at Stanford.
After retiring from competition in 1996, Talbott was hired as the women’s squash coach at Yale, where he led the Bulldogs to their first national championship in 18 years.
Talbott believes in promoting the game and using it to positively impact the lives of young people, especially those from underserved communities. He has been involved with urban squash programs around the country and, in 2009, founded Xtreme Squash, a non-profit urban squash/education program in Palo Alto targeting middle school and high school students.
Talbott’s wife, Michelle, is a world-class cellist. The couple has two children: daughter, Maya, who graduated from Stanford in 2013, and son, Nick, who is the associate head coach of the women’s squash program and Squash Club program director.
Talbott’s older brother, Dave, is the longtime head coach of the Yale men's and women's squash teams.
Talbott is a big sports fan and enjoys golf, hiking and bike riding in his free time.