Alycia Parks backed to crack the WTA Tour top ten in 2023
Alycia Parks has been backed to crack the top ten of the WTA Rankings in the upcoming season after her maiden title in Lyon.
Parks upset Caroline Garcia in the Lyon final but had already turned heads with her performance during the week.
Rennae Stubbs has compared Parks’ serve with ‘peak Serena Williams’ and feels that she is set to rocket up the rankings.
“Her serve is, I’m telling you, when they’re coming at me… Oh my god, it’s like Serena peak, that’s how good her serve is when it goes in,” she said on The Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast.
“I’m telling you, she’s a potential top-10 player within the next 12 months. She’s got to keep, obviously, the body healthy. She’s a strong girl, really wants it, she has a great head on her shoulders.
“I think she’s a great talent and there’s a great upside for her. She has every power tool in the world, and without question can be a Grand Slam champion one day if she keeps putting the work in. She is good, really good.”
Stubbs got a good look at Parks while working with Serena Williams ahead of the 2022 US Open.
However, she admits that Parks might not have been the best training partner because of her big game.
“I knew a bit about her and her big game,” Stubbs added.
“Last year at the US Open, I really wanted Serena to play practice sets against as many people as possible, something she had never done in the past, but I felt with very little match play over the last year, she needed to play practice sets. It’s the closest thing to simulating a match.
“She played Ons Jabeur, Maria Sakkari, Sofia Kenin, all well-known players.
“The next day, Serena was having a bad day and she was getting spanked by Alycia. She was acing like 120mph T serves, out wide. I was like ‘what the f***?’.
“First of all, I was thinking, why would you get this girl to practice with Serena? She loves Serena, clearly her idol, but she was going out and having the best time, serving her off the court, and Serena – it’s not building up her confidence. It was the worst practice we had before the US Open.
“She was so good, she was literally pounding the ball. I was like, ‘how does this girl lose?’”
The win in Lyon saw Parks move up to being world No 51 and she has many believing her rankings rise has only just begun.
