By James Brady
Serena Williams has dominated Maria Sharapova for the past decade, but anything can happen when you get the two best women's tennis players in the world facing off.
The 2015 Australian Open is nearing its end, with the men's finals set to wrap things up on Sunday in the United States, but first we've got the women's finals, featuring the top two seeds in the tournament in Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.
The first day of the tournament saw eight seeded women lose, and the bracket was just as unpredictable throughout the remainder of the tournament. But it's no surprise to see Williams, the top seed looking for her 19th Grand Slam title to move to third all-time among women, and Sharapova, the No. 2 seed, meet in the final.
The result of this match, given the history of these two, also doesn't look very hard to predict on paper.
Sharapova beat Williams two times in a row back in 2004, eliminating her from Wimbledon and then winning the WTA Tour Championships final in Los Angeles, but has not beaten her since then. The two have played each other 15 times since Sharapova's two-match streak, and Williams has won every single one of them, including four Grand Slams. More than that, Williams has dropped just three sets to Sharapova in those 15 meetings.
You don't find too many ridiculous streaks like that on this level, but a recent one does come to mind: Tomas Berdych's 17-match losing skid to Rafael Nadal. Berdych snapped that streak in the quarterfinals, dominating Nadal from start to finish to move to the semifinals. Nadal's previous domination of Berdych is very similar to Williams' streak over Sharapova.
Williams is also saying many of the same things that Nadal said prior to his defeat at the hands of Berdych -- that Sharapova can't be overlooked, that this is a new match and that the record against her simply doesn't matter at the end of the day.
The match is set for 3:30 a.m. ET on Saturday morning. ESPN will broadcast the matchup, and anybody hoping to watch online can do so at WatchESPN or the Australian Open website.
