 "<b>Christopher Clarey:</b> 19 years of a sibling rivalry")
The sibling rivalry, at least on the tennis tour, started right here at the Australian Open for the Williams sisters.
It was 1998, and older sister Venus beat younger sister Serena, 7-6 , 6-1, in a second-round match that — as intrusive as it felt to watch — surely drew more attention than any second-round match in history between a pair of Australian Open debutantes.
The fascination in their dynamic and their futures was there from the start in Melbourne Park, known then as Flinders Park when it had only one stadium with a retractable roof instead of three. A picture of Venus consoling Serena after the match was on the front page of The New York Times.
Though it would be tempting to label their Australian Open final on Saturday as a full-circle moment and to speculate that it might be their last meeting at this late a stage of a Grand Slam tournament, it seems best to resist the temptation.
Williams sisters (Reuters)
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“I watched Venus today celebrating after she won the semifinal like she was a 6-year-old girl, and it made you want to cry for joy just watching her,” said Marion Bartoli, a former Wimbledon champion. “Such a powerful image, and it makes you think about all those questions she was getting: “When are you retiring? Have you thought about retiring? How much longer?”
“You must let the champions decide when the right moment comes.”
The Williamses are both great champions, even if Serena is clearly the greater player with her 22 Grand Slam singles titles and her long run at No. 1, a spot she can reclaim from Angelique Kerber with a win Saturday.
Serena has been the most prolific Grand Slam winner after age 30 in tennis history, and she is back in rare form again after another extended break at the end of 2016. She disconnected completely from the game and physical training initially and had to push hard to get back in shape in November and December.
It worked. She has not dropped a set here despite a challenging draw, nor has she even been pushed to a tiebreaker. Newly engaged to the American technology entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, who has watched her matches from the players box, and seemingly refreshed, Serena deserves to be the favourite to win her 23rd major singles title and break her tie with Steffi Graf for the highest total in the Open era.
In this tournament, Serena has beaten two former members of the top 10 — Belinda Bencic and Lucie Safarova — and one current member, the in-form No. 9 seed Johanna Konta. Venus’s draw has been soft by comparison, devoid of top 10 players — past or present — and including only one seeded player: No. 24 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
On Thursday, she had to scrap and come back to win, 6-7 , 6-2, 6-3, against the powerful unseeded American CoCo Vandeweghe, while Serena cruised past the unseeded Croat Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, 6-2, 6-1.
Serena, who already holds a 16-11 edge over her sister, could be the fresher player, too, on Saturday. But the psychology remains complex and the fallout unpredictable, even after all these years.
“When I’m playing on the court with her, I think I’m playing the best competitor in the game,” Venus said. “I don’t think I’m chump change either, you know. I can compete against any odds. No matter what, I can get out there, and I compete.”
They have not played since the 2015 United States Open, when Serena won, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3, in a quarterfinal in which Venus attacked, often successfully, from the start but had no answer in the end for Serena’s ultimate weapon: her first serve.
It was an intense match in which the big crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium seemed more reflective than fully engaged; one in which Serena’s celebration was understandably subdued with her sister across the net, even if their matches are no longer the awkward, constricted affairs of their early years.
Saturday’s final in Melbourne could be intriguing on multiple levels, in part because of the Australian public. Venus is viewed here, as elsewhere, as a sympathetic figure: the older sister who has handled the younger’s greater tennis success unselfishly and with dignity. And though both sisters have had to cope with major health problems and family tragedy, with the murder of their half sister Yetunde Price in 2003, Venus is the one whose tennis fortunes dipped more dramatically.