Significant Hurdles for the Williams Sisters

Well, we're almost back there, again.  Back to that awkward, uncomfortable predicament in sports fandom of having to watch family members get after each other over a game.  No, not that pair of pre-teens separated by the Optimist League commissioner because they were both too good to play on the same soccer team.  Not the brothers squaring off against one another on a basketball court because one had the grades to head off to private school, while the other sticks it out in P.S. 182.  We're talking high stakes, here...big money, big trophies, big history.  It can only mean women's professional tennis, and it can only mean the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena.  If these two remarkable athletes can notch 4th round wins on Ashe Stadium Court, today, the girls will have no choice but to officially duke it out with one another for the 27th time.  Again, it's an awkward and uncomfortable proposition for us fans.  Gosh, do we even wanna see it?  You bet your ascot, we do!

First, though, there is the matter of notching those two wins on Ashe.  And it will be no small matter.  Venus steps up to the plate first, facing Estonian qualifier, Annet Kontaveit.  Qualifier, schmalifier!  Kontaveit is flat-out dealing at the 2015 U.S. Open, already eliminating an experienced, capable trio of Casey Dellacqua, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova(31), and Madison Brengle.  The qualifying route can certainly take it's toll when a player is fortunate enough to advance to these later rounds, but Kontaveit has mostly breezed in Flushing Meadows, and she's running around on 19-year-old legs, to boot.  She's won 10 tournies on the "minor-league" ITF tour, 7 of those titles coming on hardcourts.  A win over Venus, today, would help to catapult Kontaveit up the WTA rankings, and allow her to find a few more main draws on tour without having to sweat the qualifying process.

Serena's 4th round opponent certainly needs no introduction to American tennis fans.  Madison Keys has been on a meteoric rise within the WTA since 2009, and she currently resides at #19 in the world rankings.  Keys is only 20-years-old and the future is beginning to look oh-so-bright for the Illinois native who was groomed at the Evert Academy in Boca Raton.  When does that future really begin to crystallize, though?  Will Madison be forced to wait for the American crown until Serena abdicates, or can she find a way to simply seize the throne?  Yes, it's a pretty cheeky question.  Come on, Serena is playing for a calendar Slam and her 22nd major!  Fine, but Keys put up a pretty cheeky performance against Serena in the semis of this year's Australian Open, saving 8(!) match points before bowing, 7-6(5), 6-2.  Madison Keys has always torn the cover off the ball, but since Lindsay Davenport began to work with Keys at the tail end of 2014, she's had the luxury of learning from - and leaning on - a coach who built her own Hall of Fame career on translating power into results when it mattered most.

Ashe should be jam-packed, and you better believe the crowd will look to lift the sisters over the final hurdles on the road to yet another installment of the world's greatest sibling rivalry.