It’s Venus vs. Serena — With a Slam Streak on the Line

A match where Serena Williams is struggling often ends up being one of the thrilling modern sports experiences, because you’re waiting for the moment when it will kick in—that compiled urgency, born of evolution and thousands of hours of training, to make her stop shanking backhands and suddenly demolish an opponent. It happens more than you’d think, as Serena’s path toward a calendar year Grand Slam has not been a smooth path of domination. With Tuesday’s quarterfinal matchup against sister Venus, the path should get even bumpier. Venus, after all, is the women’s player with the most wins against Serena, who will likely go down as the best player of all-time. There’s that whole big sister/little sister thing, and there’s no one who knows Serena’s game as well. They have a history at the U.S. Open and most recently met at Wimbledon, where Serena won in straight sets, but nothing about it was easy in a physical or emotional sense. "But this Grand Slam thing isn’t supposed to be about fine-tuning, a matter of one player’s mere adjustments," writes Sports Illustrated’s S.L. Price. "Winning all four majors should be a brutal march, a mental wringer. It should be hard, especially in the final step." As stories go, it doesn’t get more interesting than the most successful sporting siblings of the modern era—what, you were going to pick Markieff and Marcus Morris?—facing off as one of them is set to complete the most successful run of individual sporting accomplishment in the 21st century.