This article appeared in the Jan. 21, 1998, edition of The New York Times after the Williams sisters played each other in a Grand Slam tournament for the first time.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Their beads fell from their Technicolor cornrows and littered the stadium floor. It was proof that meeting your sister in the second round of your first visit to the Australian Open is an unraveling experience, even for the poised and powerful Williams sisters, who have joint designs on the No. 1 ranking now owned by yet another overachieving teenager, Martina Hingis.