Mona Guerrant

Anne Guerrant, also known as Mona Anne Guerrant, was an American professional tennis player from 1971–1980.

She ranked as high as #11 in the world in singles in 1976 and was the winner of four singles titles in Portland, South Florida, and in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand. She won many doubles titles on the pro tour with several different partners including Ann Kiyomura and Kerry Reid with whom she won the Australian Open doubles title in 1977. She was a women's doubles and mixed doubles standout in World Team Tennis and was part of the #1 women's doubles team in the League with Billie Jean King in 1975 and the #1 mixed doubles team with Ross Case in 1978. Anne retired from the pro tour in 1980, and since then she has also won one world and fourteen age group National Singles Championships as of 2016. She is a retired real estate entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and author of How to Be Richer Than Your Parents, a book about finances for high schoolers and young adults.

Guerrant grew up in Iowa City, Iowa, in a big family with seven children. As a little girl she was always playing sports. Even though she was one of the best local baseball players, when she was 10 she was not allowed to play Little League baseball because she was a girl. Looking for an alternative sport open to girls, one of her brothers showed her how to play tennis. She was discovered by Don Klotz, the Tennis Coach at the University of Iowa, when she won her first tournament. Klotz taught her for free until she was 18 and went off to college. While she was at Iowa City High School there were no sports for girls at all. When she was a high school junior Guerrant went to her local school board and made a case for a girls' tennis team. She got all five votes. The school got a girls' tennis team, and Guerrant won the state high school tournament twice. She received an academic scholarship to Rollins College in Florida where she played varsity tennis. The women's pro tennis tour was just getting started when she graduated with a degree in Behavioral Science, and she decided to try the pro tour until her money ran out. The money never ran out.

Guerrant was one of the founders of the Women’s Tennis Association along with Billie Jean King and other women’s rights pioneers. She was the Chairman of the Ranking Committee and helped introduce the first computer-generated ranking system to the women’s pro tour. Women’s tennis was a highly visible manifestation of the progress of the Women’s Lib movement of the 1970s. The crowds grew, prize money kept increasing, and women gained more and more respect as athletes and as people.

Guerrant lives in Gilbert, Arizona with her husband, Terry Guerrant, whom she married in 1975. They have one son, Daniel Guerrant. The Guerrants were real estate investment entrepreneurs from 1976 until they retired in 2005.

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