MELBOURNE, Australia -- It's funny today to see old photos of them. With the clattering beads still woven into their hair, and their arms laced together as they laughed like schoolgirls, they took a bow together at midcourt after playing the very first match of a rivalry that's changed tennis without ever having a corrosive effect on them.
Venus Williams was 17 and Serena Williams was just 16 and still wore braces when the sisters met for the first time as pros 19 years ago to the day Saturday. After that match at the Australian Open in 1998, which Venus won 7-6 (4), 6-1, she voiced a sentiment very similar to what they still say now.
"Even though it was Serena, I'm still a competitor," Venus said. "After the match, I told her, 'Serena, I'm sorry I took you out. I didn't want to, but I had to do it.'"
People laughed. A lot has changed since then -- but not in any of the respects Venus mentioned. The Williams sisters have been the cause of incalculable joy and awe-inspiring achievement since that match. They also kept on trying to take each other out the next 25 times they played. Almost every bit of prophecy about the history-making feats predicted for them has come true. They've both been No. 1. Both have won multiple Grand Slams.
And now, unexpected as it sounds, it's actually not too early to dream a little about another milestone -- what would be their first Grand Slam final meeting in nearly eight years -- happening here again, given how well both of them are playing so far at the 2017 Australian Open.
It's not out of the realm of possibility after second-seeded Serena dispatched American countrywoman Nicole Gibbs 6-1, 6-3 on a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon at Rod Laver Arena, while 13th-seeded Venus steamrolled China's Duan Ying-Ying a day earlier in just 58 minutes.
Both sisters have moved into the round of 16. But because they're on opposite sides of the draw, they can meet only in the final next Saturday night in Melbourne.
"We had so much fun," Serena said when asked what she remembers about her first match against Venus. "I just remember when the draw came out, I had to play her in the second round, and we had a tough first set. Then she really went through [me] in the second."
That year, the sisters were already so self-assured that they made news at the tournament for saying they believed they were good enough to beat a top-200 male player. Then they actually went off to Court 12 at Yarra Park and played one set apiece against Karsten Braasch, a mustachioed 30-year-old German pro with aviator glasses, a funky serve and a habit of smoking cigarettes between games. Years later, Braasch was still regaling people with stories about how he had a few beers before he and the Williamses played and still managed to beat Serena 6-1 and Venus 6-2.
When Venus ran into him months later at the French Open, she joked, "That never happened."
Said Serena: "Hmmm, I don't seem to remember that [match]."
Her memory has gotten exponentially sharper -- and funnier. When asked to recall the time she beat former US Open champ Andy Roddick in a practice showdown, Williams takes great joy in rubbing it in, once telling reporters at the 2009 Australian Open that "there's no need to have a rematch" with Roddick because their first meeting, a 6-1 Serena win, was so lopsided.
"We were 10 years old!" Roddick protested. "I had to literally run around in the shower to get wet. She was bench-pressing dump trucks already at that time."
A lot has changed since then. Nobody in 1998, or even in 2009, really expected both Williams sisters to still be playing 19 or 20 years after they started. And today, if you Google Braasch's name trying to find out more about him or that off-hours contest with the Williamses, a copy of a first-person story he wrote about their match for Britain's Guardian newspaper turns up on Reddit. Last month, Serena announced her engagement to Alexis Ohanian on -- where else? -- Reddit, which Ohanian cofounded with a college roommate.
But Serena arrived here claiming she wasn't going to think about the engagement or anything else until after this tournament. She's still trying to win her 23rd Grand Slam singles title and thus break an Open-era tie with Steffi Graf.
Venus, who lost to Serena in the 2003 Australian Open final, the last time they played Down Under, now says, "She showed me the way then. And she's still showing me the way."
Venus, always the more serious of the two sisters, has won seven Slam titles and reigns now as the elegant Grand Dame of the sport. Serena, true to her father Richard's prediction, has turned out to be the flashier personality and more rapacious competitor. She's always been the far less conflicted sister when it's come to having to play each other on the sport's biggest stages.
"Let's get out of here," a stone-faced Venus whispered to Serena before slinging an arm around her little sister's shoulders at the net after beating her at the crazily hyped 2001 US Open women's final. It's hard to convey in words how electric that night was at the time, unless you were there. Spotlights swept the New York City sky before the match. Oprah Winfrey and Aretha Franklin -- two other African-American icons -- were among the celebrities in the crowd. The power-charged groundstrokes that the Williams sisters blasted at each other were as crackling as anything the women's game had ever seen.
Seeing the two of them somehow make it to the final here, opposite each other once again, would be another must-see event.
While second-ranked Serena's move deep into the draw is always expected, Venus' chances of getting back into a Slam final haven't looked this good in a while. Her climb into the top 10 a year ago was her highest since she was diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome, the autoimmune disease that unpredictably saps her of energy.
But she's not just winning here. She's winning with ease.
Just as important, none of Venus' matches -- a fourth-round encounter against qualifier Mona Barthel, then a possible pairing against the winner of the Svetlana Kuznetsova-Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova match -- seems beyond her.
After that, Venus could have a semifinal showdown against defending champ Angelique Kerber, who ended Serena's record-tying 183 straight weeks at No. 1 last fall.
Seeing the Williams sisters back in a Slam final again anywhere -- but especially here, where their rivalry started -- might actually be something they could enjoy, if only because of the doubts that it would ever happen again.
"We really had so much fun playing," Serena said of that Aussie Open match against Venus in '98. "It was -- it's really exciting, looking back, and looking at those moments. You don't really get those back."
Says who?