Serena Williams will today face her elder sister Venus for the 30th time in their career at the Arthur Ashe Stadium after they booked their respective spots in the third round of the US Open.
On Tuesday, Serena made it to the third round encounter with a 6-2, 6-2 win over German world number 101 Carina Witthoeft
While 38-year-old Venus made it into the third round with a 6-4, 7-5 victory over Camila Giorgi of Italy.
This is the stage the sisters are meeting at a major since the Australian Open in 1998, as well as their second encounter of 2018 and the 30th career WTA Tour match between the two.
In Serena’s words: ‘Every match is just looking forward to the next, which is going to obviously be incredibly hard. It’s obviously a tough match. It’s so young in the tournament. It is what it is. In an ideal world, we’d meet later.’
While Venus said in her post-match press conference: ‘Yeah, I mean, obviously, it’s early in the tournament, so both of us are going to be looking forward to continuing to play better. ‘Obviously, it’s definitely a tough draw,’ she said in her on-court interview.
The sisters have over 121 titles between them with Serena defeating her big sis 17 times on the way to winning an incredible 72 titles by herself. Serena is also the number 1 WTA prize money winner, followed by Venus.
The two tennis greats were child prodigies who were trained by their father Richard from an early age. Both women typically met at the final or semifinal of most tournaments.