Professional tennis player Alycia Parks, who trains with Williams up to three times a week, says the 23-time Grand Slam champion is in remarkable shape and hitting the ball brilliantly
If anyone is paying close attention to what is happening on the practice courts around Serena Williams right now, it is getting harder to dismiss as casual exercise.
Alycia Parks, a professional WTA Tour player who has been hitting with the 23-time Grand Slam champion on a regular basis, spoke with the Tennis Channel on Thursday and gave the tennis world exactly the kind of update it has been waiting for. Williams, 44, is fit. She is striking the ball brilliantly. And she is doing it multiple times a week.
Parks described how the arrangement came together organically, reaching out to Williams while on the Middle East swing of the tour and asking if they could get on the court together when she returned to the United States. Williams agreed without hesitation, and the sessions have since become a consistent part of both players’ routines, with Parks saying they train together roughly three times a week when she is home.
What Parks saw on the court
The description Parks offered of Williams in practice was not polite small talk. She was direct and specific about what she observed, saying Williams looks great physically, is clearly in strong shape, and is hitting the ball at a level that would turn heads. For someone who last played a professional match at the 2022 U.S. Open, that kind of report carries weight.
Parks also spoke to the benefit she personally draws from those sessions. The influence of training alongside one of the greatest players in the history of the sport has begun showing up in her actual match results. She pointed to improvements in her patience on slower balls and her ability to construct points with more intention, qualities associated closely with the way Williams built her own legendary game. Parks credited that training dynamic with giving her a level of confidence that travels with her onto the match court.
Williams has never said she is done
The comeback conversation around Williams has been alive in some form since the moment she walked off the court in New York more than three years ago. Crucially, she has never closed the door. She was deliberate at the time about avoiding the word retired, telling reporters that the chances of her returning were high and that she had a court at home she was putting to use.
In a 2022 essay for Vogue, she described her preference for the word evolution over retirement, framing her departure from professional tennis as a shift rather than an ending. That framing has always left room for what might come next.
In December 2025, Williams moved to quiet the speculation after reports emerged that she had requested to re-enter the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s International Registered Testing Pool, a requirement for active competitive players. She was subsequently cleared to return to competition by tennis’ drug-testing authority, a procedural step that raised fresh questions about her intentions.
Parks leaves the door open
Parks was careful not to make promises on Williams’ behalf. She made clear that their time together is focused on training and not on planning a return to the tour. The two do not spend their sessions discussing timelines or tournaments. It is, by Parks’ description, genuinely enjoyable work without a fixed agenda attached to it.
Still, the picture she painted is one that the tennis world will find difficult to ignore. A 44-year-old player who is physically fit, technically sharp, and training with purpose multiple times a week is not someone who has quietly stepped away from the sport. Whether that preparation leads somewhere official remains Williams’ choice alone.
She is the mother of two daughters, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. and Adira River Ohanian, and has built a full life beyond the baseline. But based on everything Parks described, whatever is happening in those practice sessions looks a great deal like someone who is not finished yet.