Serena Williams road to the final

Serena Williams lost 2 sets en route for her 6th Australian Open final, her 23rd singles Grand Slam overall. If she wins, she’ll have 19 Slams, one more than legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.

Maria Sharapova’s road to the final

Maria Sharapova was in deep trouble in the second round as she saved two match points against Alexandra Panova. She then had a smooth ride to the final – even schooling Bouchard in the quarterfinals.

Serena Williams – Maria Sharapova head to head: 16-2

Sharapova won two of their first three encounters, and since then, she has won only 3 sets in 15 matches against Serena! Their most disputed match was their semifinal in Melbourne 10 years ago, that Serena won 2-6 7-5 8-6. That match was featured in Steve Flink’s book, The greatest matches of all time:

The two most ferocious female competitors of their era clashed on the had courts of Melbourne in a blockbuster of a battle that was suspenseful, hard fought and compelling. Both players produced tennis that boggled the minds and raised the spirits of an exhilarated audience.

So, epic battle or routine win? Serena or Maria? Who do you think will win? Please share your thoughts.

By Steve Fink, World Tennis magazine, December 1989:

I met Chris Evert on the day she reached her first Grand Slam final in Paris 16 years ago, when I interviewed her for this magazine. We became good friends, and I found myself immersed in her career.
She soon realized that I was regarded by the sport’s inner circle as her Boswell, as the primary source of information about her record, and she knew that my recollection of her matches was invariably sharper than her own. Throughout her career she would defer to me at press conferences from Palm Beach to Wimbledon whenever she could not answer a question about herself.

But my involvement with her went much deeper than that. I attended both of her weddings, sat with her family at many of her critical contests in the major championships, and spoke with her frequently before, during and after tournaments to offer council.
Given those circumstances, and the highly unusual of our alliance, I made it a practice, with few exceptions, not to write about he. The conflict would be clear-cut, and I saw no reason to abuse proximity of my position. But this is the time to relax journalistic binds a bit and offer my intimate assessment. Hers was a unique journey through the seventies and across the eighties, and to understand how Evert impacted her era, there is only one place to begin.

In September 1970, at the age of 15, Evert planted the first true seed of her greatness by toppling the world’s No.1 player Margaret Court 7-6 7-6 in the semifinals at Charlotte, North Carolina. Only weeks earlier, Court had completed the Grand Slam by winning the US Open at Forest Hills on grass, but on the clay of Charlotte the Fort Lauderdale prodigy erased the rangy Australian. It was unmistakably a sign of what was to come.
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