PARIS — It will be Serena Williams versus Maria Sharapova at a Grand Slam tournament on Monday, but don’t think that this will be business as usual.
Despite playing little competitive tennis in the last 16 months, Williams may well win again. Just as she has won her last 18 matches against Sharapova, the only women’s player in this era who has rivaled Williams’s star power and earning power, yet has never rivaled her as a champion.
But Williams’s and Sharapova’s lives and perspectives are altered now, and both have something different to prove as they prepare for this fourth-round French Open duel and all that might happen beyond it — for the winner — in Paris this spring.