Venus and Serena meet again at Wimbledon, a clash that's now a treat

WIMBLEDON – Venus and and Serena Williams will meet on Centre Court Monday at Wimbledon in a fourth-round match.

That's a long way from their early days, when it seemed they would only meet in finals. But given the scarcity of these encounters these days, somehow there's a lot more emotion attached to them than there used to be, at least from the fans side.

For one thing, they won't be around forever, even if it seems they already have been around forever. For another, their fortunes have changed considerably in the last 15 years, with little sister the undisputed No. 1 and big sister now a sympathetic figure who has persevered through some health woes and still, at 35, is playing great tennis.

Serena Williams said herself over the weekend that she expected everyone to cheer for Venus. In fact, she would probably cheer for her, too.

Venus Williams has had a fairly uneventful path to Manic Monday, when all the fourth-round matches on both the men's and women's side will be played at Wimbledon, after the Sunday break.

Serena Williams has had a lot more drama; she should have gone out to Brit Heather Watson in the previous. But she prevailed, and so will make the date with her sister.

The two last met at the Rogers Cup in Montreal last summer, and it was a terrific match that had the fans in awe. They also met in Charleston in 2013. But other than those two meetings, there hadn't been a Williams v. Williams match since 2009 at the Tour Championships in Doha, Qatar.

Hopefully they can electrify the crowd – for Venus, there likely won't be too many more of these moments.

This is what their 2008 Wimbledon final looked like - the first Wimbledon final I ever covered (Nadal and Federer put on a pretty good show in the dark that year, too).

What stood out most was the fact that Serena was SO PO'd to lose, she could barely be gracious to her sister.

That's probably the essential difference between the two - beyond the big-sister, little-sister dynamic.

Had Venus lost, she'd be just happy for her sister that she won. That's not a criticism of either, just the nature of their relationship. What's amazing is that their sisterhood, through the deepest part of their rivalry, was never in question. Ever.