Tennis remains as big as life for this Hall of Fame historian-at-large

“Young man, are you chasing me across the country? If you are, be careful—I’ll bet I’ve driven across it more times than you.”

My inquisitor was Gene Mako, a 1973 International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF) inductee. Most renowned for being all-time great Don Budge’s doubles partner back in the ‘30s, Mako on this day in 2004 was 88 years old. He’d come to Newport for the 50th anniversary of the ITHF. Along with a flock of other Hall of Famers, Mako stood on the lawn of the Newport Casino, awaiting the organization of a group photo. True to his post-tennis career as an art dealer, Mako wore a light blue blazer and checkered dark blue-and-black striped pants that made him look like a mix between an ice cream vendor and a character lifted from the pages of Alice in Wonderland.

Eighteen months prior to our encounter in Newport, Mako and I had sat for four hours inside the coffee shop of the fabled Los Angeles Tennis Club. While Budge was the better player, Mako was far wiser to the ways of the world, possessed of a mind both street-smart and highbrow, attuned to rhythms not just of sports, but of art, music and even a few more temptations. He’d told me much about how and Budge enjoyed their time together, from a mutual affinity for the music of Benny Goodman to the week in New York when Budge’s penchant for ice cream had proven costly.

There’d also come a long probe on my part to understand the playing style of a Budge rival. One after another, Mako vetoed my comparisons to contemporary greats. At last, I’d offered up a viable candidate. “Young man,” said Mako, “we’ve been talking about this for 30 minutes, and finally we’re effing getting somewhere. It’s about time you knew your ass from your elbow.”

As Mako and I reconnected in Newport, Budge had been dead for four years. “Of course I miss him,” Mako said. “Don was tremendous—and don’t you dare tell me anyone else ever had a better backhand.”

Mako then told me the tale of a tense Davis Cup match the two had played in 1937 versus Germany, the Nazi swastika flying high over the stadium. Nearly 70 years later, it was as all as vivid as if it had been played one day prior. “Some real problems in the third set,” he said, “but I did enough of my thing well enough for Don to do his thing.”

It was hard not to savor time with Mako. Of course I was chasing him. How could I resist the chance to pursue this generous and thoughtful man who had the last name of a shark? That’s what I do for a living: hunt, gather, fillet and cook tennis stories. And every time I arrive in Newport and enter the ITHF, I become that much more convinced that this is my own distinct, quirky but meaningful life purpose. For you see, to me, tennis history is very much a personal matter.

The author, with Melody Braden, widow of the late Hall of Famer Vic Braden, at left; and with Ray Benton, Braden's business manager, at right. (Joel Drucker)

A late Friday afternoon chat on the lawn with Mako wasn’t the first time I’d made a trip that commenced in Los Angeles and made its way to the ITHF. In the summer of 1978, two months after graduating high school, I’d driven across the country from L.A. (only once, Gene, you win) with my closest tennis friend, Mike Anderson. Nearly two weeks after we headed east, Sunday afternoon was spent at a pro tournament at the Longwood Cricket Club in the Boston area. The next morning, we drove south to the ITHF. It was drizzly, so all we could do was sneak on to a grass court and hit for 15 minutes. But already, even if I didn’t know it, at the age of 18, tennis history and so much of what the ITHF stood for was already embedded in my DNA. As Mary, the character played by Donna Reed in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, whispers into her sweetheart’s deaf ear, “George Bailey, I’ll love you ‘til the day I die.”

Join me on December 7, 1972. I was 12 years old and had played tennis for barely a year. More significantly, I was that kid for whom the study of baseball cards was merely the start of an intellectual quest. By the time I was 12, I lived for the chance to read The Sporting News, Sport Magazine and Sports Illustrated and enough sports books to wear out the library section numbered “796.” Having ditched Pop Warner football and Little League baseball, I remained a dutiful reader, bringing that same curiosity to the tennis. In our family living room that December afternoon, I held a copy of future Hall of Famer John Barrett’s book, World of Tennis ’72 and announced to my older brother Ken, “Guess what? Tomorrow is Julie Heldman’s birthday. She’ll be 27.”

“You know,” said Ken. He paused. “If you played tennis a little more than you read about it or talked about it, you might be a good player one day.”

He had a point.

But perhaps the bigger point was that my career in tennis would revolve far more around what I could do with a pen than a racquet. Logic? Fate? Destiny? Desire? You tell me.

All through my teens, during those boom years of the ‘70s when tennis aired on every network and the magazines World Tennis and Tennis arrived faithfully each month, I inhaled tennis history and played well over 300 days a year. This was easy in Los Angeles, where the sun shined constantly and everything from courts to opponents was in abundance. The grander tennis saga was also front and center. There were my own efforts at junior and high school competitions at prestigious venues like the Los Angeles Tennis Club. There was also the UCLA campus, two miles from my house, where Jimmy Connors and other pros frequently practiced and I saw John McEnroe play a highly dramatic college match. There were future champions such as Tracy Austin, in action at the same junior tournaments that I played (and, of course, winning far more matches than I ever could). But even then, despite so much that took place right in front of me, I had no idea that the pursuit of tennis history would become my life calling.

In college, I was a history major, captivated by the ebb and flow of big ideas and social changes—democracy, the rise of the marketplace, literary and aesthetic trends, migration patterns, even the meaning of history itself. Summers were spent teaching children at a tennis camp run by another Hall of Famer, Tony Trabert. Tony then was CBS’ lead analyst, which meant that during those summer nights he would let me read the various research materials he used to prepare for coverage of the US Open.

But not until the spring of 1982, in my final quarter of college, did the chance to write about tennis enter the picture. Concurrently, in a class I was taking on the history of history, I read the philosopher-historian Hegel and found several of his ideas bore a direct relation to my longstanding favorite player, tennis’ first rock star, Jimmy Connors: “The world-historical individuals are those who were the first to formulate the desires of their fellows explicitly.”

ITHF induction ceremony delayed until 2021:

That summer, soon after conducting my first one-on-one interview with Connors, I became convinced of my life’s mission. Tennis had long been a misunderstood sport. It was clear to me now that I had been put on earth to tell the world what tennis was all about, revealed through the rough-and-tumble journey of  Connors. “I only know an object in so far as I know myself and my own determination through it,” wrote Hegel. Or, as Connors put it, “And I’ve followed guys to the ends of the earth just to play them again.”

This took a while to make happen. Twenty-one years after that epiphany, prior to driving south to New York to cover the 2003 US Open, I spent a week inside the walls of the ITHF. Day after day, hour after hour, I combed through copies of World Tennis, Tennis and many others, unearthing tales of Connors as a junior, his early pro years, the dawn of Open tennis and the full bloom of his career. Notes from dozens of stories were typed into my computer, in time turned into hundreds of 6x8 notecards that eventually made their way into my book, Jimmy Connors Saved My Life.

Twelve months later marked my encounter with Mako, a golden week in Newport that also included work as a co-producer for a Tennis Channel interview show titled, “Center Court with Chris Myers.” By that time, as I helped our team for extensive interviews with Hall of Famers Trabert, Nancy Richey, Rosie Casals, John Newcombe, Margaret Court, Dennis Ralston and others, I’d begun to see Newport as a home away from home, dock and launch point for all the stories I’d told and hoped to continue learning and telling.

Since then, more trips to Newport, for research and ceremony, for present and past, to witness the recently honored greats and study the long-celebrated ones. But the reach of Newport carries far. As part of my role as historian-at-large for the ITHF, I have conducted extensive interviews with inductees in many places, from Melbourne to Florida, New York to Texas. Take in the tales of Cliff Drysdale, growing up in a small town in South Africa. Or barnstormer Butch Buchholz, playing 30 matches in 30 days in 30 cities. Or Li Na, making her way from Wuhan to Roland Garros. These are powerful experiences, these stories of individuals who worked and willed their way to success. And they all fit into the tennis tapestry I’ve been weaving in my head since those days in my family living room. As William Faulkner wrote, “It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

History also found me in the most tragic of ways, even to a confluence of dates that would seem downright hokey except for its factual and sober truth. In the summer of 2010, the woman I’d been in love with for 28 years, Joan Edwards, was struck with an infection, made even worse by lupus, a disease she’d suffered since 1981. Joan got even worse just before that year’s US Open. She died on September 2—which also happens to be Jimmy Connors’ birthday. To the ends of the earth. How can I not take tennis history personally?

Gene Mako died on June 14, 2013. That same month I explored the Oakland neighborhood where Don Budge grew up, one block from the park where he taught himself that magnificent backhand.

Still chasing.

Hall of Fame experiences and tennis memories will always have a special place in our hearts. Help commemorate this historic pause in tennis and put your name in the Hall of Fame at tennisfame.com/yourname

With a donation of as little as $25.00, your name and photo will be a part of this new interactive exhibit in the Museum at the International Tennis Hall of Fame. A virtual rendering of the exhibit will also be online to share with the world!

Join thousands of tennis fans from across the globe to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime exhibit to have your name alongside the names of the 257 legends of the game. Your contribution enables the International Tennis Hall of Fame to continue our work to preserve tennis history, celebrate its champions, and inspire generations to come.