Last week's Lyon Open champion Parks gets beaten in Linz R1 by Kalinina

The champions curse continued in Linz today as Alycia Parks stumbled in her first match after becoming a WTA champion, getting beaten by Kalinina 6-2 7-5.

Most players are not able to keep playing well after winning a trophy and it happened to Alycia Parks as well. She was brilliant last week in Lyon but lacked the juice needed today to perform well. From the start, it was clear that Parks was very flat as her serve didn't work well and it's her major weapon.

Kalinina took an early break and then added another one to complete the first set 6-2. She hit only 48 % first serve and that's simply not going to get it done against a very good talent like Kalinina. She improved in the second set quite a bit and it made all the difference. The match was competitive with the players trading breaks early.

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The second set remained competitive after that but neither player was able to find a breakthrough. Towards the end of the match, Parks started to miss more and more as it simply wasn't her day and Kalinina was able to get away with a 7-5 win.