Alycia Parks tied Venus Williams for the second-fastest serve ever recorded at the US Open, a 129 mph first serve struck in 2021, and has spent her career being coached by her own father.
This former professional basketball player taught himself tennis technique by studying Venus and Serena Williams on video.
Her real story is one of family, an unconventional path to the pro tour, and a genuine crisis of confidence in 2024 that Serena Williams herself helped talk her through.
Alycia Parks Biography
She was born December 31, 2000, in Atlanta, Georgia. Alycia Parks stands 1.85 meters, or 6 feet 1 inch, tall, and plays right-handed with a two-handed backhand.
She has an older sister, Mikayla Parks, just 17 months her senior, who also played competitive tennis growing up and served as Alycia’s regular hitting partner and closest companion through their developmental years.
The family relocated so both sisters could train at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida, part of what is now IMG Academy.
This move required real adjustment for their parents as they rebuilt their lives around their daughters’ shared tennis ambitions.
Their father, Michael Parks, has described what that sibling partnership meant in practical terms, saying simply that having a sibling in it with her meant the world.
Alycia attended Locust Grove Elementary School and graduated from high school in 2019. That year she faced a genuinely consequential decision: several colleges had offered her tennis scholarships, but she turned all of them down to go pro immediately, betting entirely on herself.
Her path to that point was already unconventional by tour standards; she played only eight junior events on the ITF circuit.
She never held an official junior ranking, meaning she arrived on the professional tour without the typical junior resume most WTA players build first.
Career
Alycia Parks turned professional in 2019 and built her ranking through the WTA Challenger and WTA 125 circuits before breaking into tour-level events.
Her signature career moment came at the 2022 Ostrava Open, where, ranked just No. 144 and playing as a qualifier, she defeated former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova, one of the most notable upsets of that season.
That same year, she won a WTA 125 doubles title at Ostrava alongside Caty McNally and a WTA 125 singles title at Angers, finishing the season ranked inside the top 75 for the first time, a result that felt at the time like the true beginning of her career.
Her breakthrough came in 2023. She won her first and, to date, only WTA Tour singles title at the Lyon Open, defeating Caroline Garcia in the final, and reached a career-high singles ranking of No. 40 that August.
She also won her first WTA Tour doubles title that year at the Cincinnati Open, a WTA 1000 level event, partnering with Taylor Townsend, and reached a career-high doubles ranking of No. 27 that September.
The 2024 season told a much more difficult story than most bios acknowledge. She opened the year with her best Grand Slam result to date, a run to the third round of the Australian Open before losing to Coco Gauff, and it appeared to be the start of a strong season.
Instead, she went on to lose 12 consecutive matches over the following four months, frequently failing to escape qualifying rounds and missing main draws almost entirely, a genuinely brutal stretch for a player coming off a career-high ranking the year before.
She briefly steadied herself by winning a WTA 125 title in Angers that year, along with two more WTA 125 singles titles at Warsaw and Gaiba, results that kept her ranking from sliding out of the top 100 even as consistency remained elusive.
Her 2025 season showed signs of a fuller recovery, with semifinal runs at Auckland and Monterrey, along with her first-ever main-draw match win at the French Open, an upset over world No. 13 Karolina Muchova. As of May 2026, Parks is ranked No. 79 in singles and No. 207 in doubles.
Her best Grand Slam results across all four majors remain the third round at the Australian Open in 2024, second round finishes at the French Open in 2025 and 2026, a second round finish at Wimbledon in 2023, and first round finishes at the US Open in multiple years.
Serena Williams’ Advice
Alycia has spoken about a genuine mentorship relationship with Serena Williams, one of the more unusual personal connections on tour.
In the same CLAY Magazine interview, she said Serena has been a huge inspiration who helps her regularly, that she reaches out whenever she has a question, and that Serena always gives her a good answer.
Asked directly about the specific advice that mattered most, Parks said Serena told her to go back to what she was doing when she was winning, and pointed out that her parents know her better than anyone else, advice that directly led Parks to reappoint her father as her coach.
Michael Parks: Father and Coach
Michael Parks, a former professional basketball player, has coached his daughter since her childhood, largely teaching himself tennis in the process.
In an interview on the Tennis.com Podcast, he explained that he began studying Venus and Serena Williams’ technique through videos and books, working to fill in his own knowledge gaps rather than relying on a traditional coaching background.
He has also brought in outside expertise at points along the way, including input from coaches Rodney Harmon, Scott Beard and Rick Macci, while remaining the primary figure in Alycia’s development.
He has described the family’s daily life with warmth and humor, recalling in one interview that when the girls brought home A’s and B’s from school, his wife would take them to the toy store, joking that Alycia, even then, took forever to decide what she actually wanted.
The father-daughter coaching arrangement was not constant throughout her career. At one point, Michael stepped away from coaching Alycia directly, and she worked with other coaches, including a short stint with Sascha Bajin, a coach known for his past work with Naomi Osaka.
Alycia has since said openly that the decision to move away from her father’s coaching was the wrong one.
Speaking to CLAY Magazine in November 2024, she said the period was rocky, that she had tried to change what was actually helping her win, which she now recognizes was the wrong decision, and that she had to return to basics rather than chase a different approach entirely.
Alycia Parks Net Worth
Alycia Parks’ net worth is estimated at $2 million. Her actual career prize money stands at $3 million. Specific details of her endorsement and sponsorship income have not been made public.
Still, her total career earnings, drawn directly from her WTA Tour and Challenger circuit results, represent a strong financial position.
