“She always plays very tough, and each time is very challenging. But there is a lot more tennis left to play, and I hope we can play better and better,” she said.

Serena was always a step ahead of the second seed in this match, but Venus was in no mood to give up without a fight. She broke Serena when she was serving for the match, and looked dangerously close to pulling it off as the encounter headed to a tie-break. The third seed, however, managed to recover just in time.

Patty Schnyder seems to have got her wish. She ended Yan Zi’s run comfortably in the first semi-final of the day, and with her 6-4, 6-3 victory over the Chinese player, she expressed a preference for the younger Williams in the final.

“I have beaten her before, and have never beaten Venus, so I would like to play Serena,” she said, before the Williams-Williams match began.

Serena leads their head-to-head record 6-3, but Schnyder emerged the victor in their last two meetings. The permutations and combinations may be endless, but statistics will cease to matter as the Bangalore crown awaits its new owner.