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.

Today, there were fears that the rank newcomer, 16-year-old Serena, might wreak havoc on the already complicated family pecking order and defeat 17-year-old, 16th-ranked Venus — making good on the prediction by their father, Richard, that the littlest Williams was destined to be the greater champion of the two.

But after a heated beginning in which neither sister gave ground, Serena deferred to her elder and allowed Venus Williams, who made her own Grand Slam breakthrough when she reached the final of the United States Open last summer, to advance into the third round of this one with a 7-6 (7-4), 6-1 victory.