Heartfelt congratulations to Wendy White-Prausa, a distinguished member of the Georgia Tennis Hall of Fame (Class of 1996), on her well-deserved induction into the prestigious Georgia Sports Hall of Fame this weekend in Macon!
Wendy was a nationally ranked player throughout her junior career and reached a high of No. 8 in the girls 18-and-under division in 1978. Also that year, she won the USTA’s national sportsmanship award. The first Georgia member of the U.S. Junior Wightman Cup team, White was the Southern girls 18-and-under champion and won the USTA National Amateur Clay Court singles and doubles titles.
Just months after graduation from Westminster, where she was a four-time high school singles champion, White won three matches in qualifying to make the main draw for the U.S. Open in New York. Expectations were rightfully high for White as she enrolled at Rollins College in Florida, and she immediately became a collegiate star. As a freshman, White reached the singles final of the collegiate championships, then under the banner of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).
The following year as a sophomore, White won the title when she defeated Alycia Moulton of Stanford. White already had attained the top 40 in the world by then and was regarded as the sport’s best amateur player. White then turned pro, but stayed in school, and she remains the only prominent women’s player to graduate from college on time while playing the pro tour.
White was a fixture in the top 100 on the women’s pro tour throughout the decade and finished in the top 40 seven times. She made the third round of Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the French Open and had wins over Billie Jean King, Wendy Turnbull, Helena Sukova, Sylvia Hanika and Barbara Potter.
Wendy is a member of the Westminster and Rollins College sports Halls of Fame. She was inducted into the Southern Tennis Hall of Fame in 2001. She was inducted into the ITA Women’s College Tennis Hall of Fame in 2008.
Take a look back at Wendy’s incredible contributions to the sport with this video tribute:
