Gene Mako

A Park La Brea art collector has offered to donate his collection of paintings, which he estimates is worth $8 million, to Culver City, including originals by Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent, Aguste Rodin and Jose Clemente Orozco. But 1930s tennis star Gene Mako, 79, has attached a couple of conditions.

A Park La Brea art collector has offered to donate his collection of paintings, which he estimates is worth $8 million, to Culver City, including originals by Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent, Aguste Rodin and Jose Clemente Orozco. But 1930s tennis star Gene Mako, 79, has attached a couple of conditions.

UCLA won the first annual Duel of Champions alumni tournament, beating USC, 28-24, at Sunny Hills Racquet Club in Fullerton, and raising an estimated $15,000 for St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and for the two schools' tennis programs. The tournament attracted 148 players and an estimated 700 spectators. It also featured as special guests former Wimbledon champions Alex Olmedo, Gene Mako (doubles) and Jack Kramer.

An art museum is not in the cards after all for Culver City, whose officials had been considering the possibility for more than a year. Building the museum was the condition of an offer from Los Angeles art dealer Gene Mako, who was willing to donate 800 paintings to the city as long as there was a place to house the works. Mako further requested that Culver City devote a portion of the display within its museum to paintings by his father, Bartholomew Mako.

Gene Mako, a Los Angeles art dealer who twice won the Wimbledon doubles with Don Budge, was strolling past one of the All England Club's grass courts the other day when he noticed a young black woman warming up for a match. "Who's that kid?" he asked Bud Collins of NBC. "Lori McNeil," he was told. "She any good?" Mako asked. "Not bad, not bad," he was told. "Well, she's going to be good," Mako said. "You can tell just from the way she moves." Good judge, good call.

Is Fritz Bissell a better tennis player than history major at UCLA? Bissell, a senior from Dubuque, Iowa, defeated David Ekerot of USC to win the Pacific 10 singles title Sunday at the Ojai Invitational, then immediately flunked history. "I'm honored to have my name on a plaque with the same names as . . . as . . . I don't even know who's won it," Bissell said.

A match ending under suspicious circumstances? Indifferent explanations? Strange days on the tennis circuit have not been limited to the modern era. In 1935, spectators at the Pacific Southwest championships were left dazed and confused at the Los Angeles Tennis Club when the players left the court after the third set and never returned. Nineteen-year-old Don Budge recovered from a first-set blowout and won the second and third sets against Roderick Menzel of Czechoslovakia in their final.

In Gene Mako's gallery, it's hard to see the art for the paintings. The gallery doubles as Mako's two-room Park La Brea apartment, and it is crammed with more than 500 paintings and sculptures, some covered with brown paper, others displayed on easels. Paintings are stacked on the floor, 10 deep in places. They are lined up on bookshelves and hanging on the walls. There is barely room for a toilet in Mako's bathroom, which has also been pressed into service as a display space.

"What would you like to know about my sex life?" Gene Mako, playfully greeting a visitor to his West Hollywood home, laughs as he poses the question. The mischievous former tennis champion, winner of four Grand Slam doubles titles in the 1930s and married since before the attack on Pearl Harbor, is 91 years old. His walker, stationed nearby, is ever present since he suffered a stroke 1 1/2 years ago. A full-time nurse provides round-the-clock care.

Don Budge, the first player and only American man to win tennis' Grand Slam, died Wednesday in Scranton, Pa., of cardiac arrest. He was 84. Budge, who had been injured in a car accident Dec. 14, died at Mercy Hospital. After the accident, Budge improved enough to be moved to a nursing home near his residence in Dingmans Ferry. He entered Mercy Hospital on Jan. 17.

We all knew John McEnroe would say some strange things along the winding road of Davis Cup. Stress happens. Before the first round, the new U.S. captain questioned the integrity of Pete Sampras after he'd pulled up injured with a torn hip muscle, and then McEnroe speculated about the intentions of doctors who treated Sampras in Australia. Then McEnroe unleashed some bizarre conspiracy theories involving the chair umpires in Zimbabwe.