Serena slips out of Venus' shadow

The little sisters' lib to which Serena Williams had light-heartedly referred became a more serious business than expected in Saturday's Nasdaq-100 Open final. During a 7-5, 7-6 victory over the world No. 1 Jennifer Capriati, which it had always been within Serena's power to achieve, there were times when it seemed the younger Williams might choke on the special responsibility of completing it.

"I felt it was my personal duty to take this title since I had beaten Venus, because Venus would have taken it herself, I believe," she said. By the time Serena had completed a long struggle to recover from a self-inflicted wound of an early second-set break, the match had run for two hours in 100-plus temperatures and even her immense strength was sapping away.

Her burden was almost certainly increased by the fact that Venus had raised so little obstacle to Serena's semi-final progress. The family, with father Richard hopping about as though he had walked barefoot on a cactus, clearly expected Serena to deliver. The crowd, however, was cool at the prospect of her doing so.

At least it was never remotely as upsetting as the hostility which greeted Serena, after Venus had withdrawn from their semi-final in last year's final at Indian Wells. Serena now says she won't go back. The worst she had to endure this time round was one-sided support for Capriati and misplaced congratulations to her opponent at the awards ceremony for having won.

Capriati seemed to feel she should have done. Privately the favourite was unhappy with the schedule, which had left her the more jaded of the finalists. She also had seven set points in the second set, which brought strange echoes of the eight match points she failed to take in last year's final against Venus.

"It was disappointing because I felt like I was pretty much in control the whole match," Capriati said. That she certainly was not.

When Serena hit the ball right it was with a dismissive power no woman before her has produced, forcing even as quick and aggressive a player as Capriati to scramble and scrape. But the longer it went on the less frequently Serena hit the ball right, and by the end she had accumulated a barely believable 59 errors.

Some were projected from positions from which it seemed easier to succeed, prompting a facetious opening press conference question: "Have you ever met an easy shot you liked?" No one can have won a straight-sets match amidst so many self-imposed wounds. It was as though Serena's purpose was something other than just winning the points. Quality testing the balls, perhaps?

How had she conquered the two top players as well as herself? This was too serious a question, apparently, to warrant too serious an answer.

With a pungent superstition about same socks, she replied with a giggle.

"I've been wearing them every match. I've never lost in them. They are a little bit dirty," Serena said. Er, you do wash them? "When the tournament's over."

The past few days may just have altered Serena's relationship to Venus. Although the Wimbledon champion denied last week there had been a sisterly shadow, Serena indicated otherwise. "This is a very big milestone for me," she said, before the light-hearted rider: "And for all the younger brothers and sisters out there."

In 20 years and 27 matches on the WTA Tour only four younger sisters have won matches against siblings. It suggests some burden of hierarchy. A liberated Serena could inflict immense damage and a more consistent one would top the world. If this is a watershed in the family, it is a change for the sport.

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