How Do You Solve a Problem Like Serena?

The first thing that must be said of the 2015 Australian Open women’s final is that none of it was a surprise. From the first point to the last, from the champion’s show of skill to the runner-up’s show of will, we got everything we expected.

With her opening swing of the match, Serena Williams battered a backhand return down the line. As well-prepared as her opponent, Maria Sharapova, must have been, she still looked jarred by the shot, and she immediately dropped serve. With one feel swoop, Serena, who hasn’t lost to Sharapova since the first George W. Bush administration, was a step ahead of her again.

An hour and 51 minutes later, with her closing swing of the match, Serena hit an ace to win the second-set tiebreaker, her sixth Australian Open, her 19th Grand Slam singles title, and her 16th straight meeting with Sharapova, 6-3, 7-6 (5). Does Serena finish big matches any other way? If she does, it’s hard to remember them. In this case, only an ace, her 18th of the evening, would do. More than ever, it was Serena’s serve, a shot she describes as “mean,” that spelled the difference between her and the world's No. 2-ranked player.

In between the first point and the last, surprises were few. Both women had a chance to show off their strengths, but only one had her weaknesses exposed. Serena and Maria hadn’t played since last March, which was long enough to make me forget just how superior the American is an athlete, and as a tennis player. Against everyone else, Sharapova dominates the scene with her power and her presence; against Serena, she suddenly looks overwhelmed, reactive, inflexible, and much less natural and versatile in her movements.

Near the end of the opening game, Serena and Sharapova traded running crosscourt forehands. The sequence lasted for half a second, but it told us everything we need to know about the difference between them as players. In the way Serena sprung forward with her first step, moved at a angle to cut the ball off, made contact with a full, helicoptering swing, and sent her shot back at a sharper crosscourt angle, she had the obvious advantage.

That advantage continued through the first set. Before the match, Sharapova said that Serena’s aggressiveness can force her to be too aggressive in return. “She’s great at making players hit that shot that you don’t necessarily have to go for,” Maria said. The first step to solving a problem is to know that you have one, right?

But what if there’s no solution available? By the end of the first set, as Sharapova’s shots caught the tape and skidded wide of the sidelines, her words no longer sounded like a healthy realization of what she needed to change; they sounded like a self-fulfilling prophecy. How do you solve a problem like Serena?

If you’re Maria, you do what you always do: dig in. While the first set showcased Serena at her most untouchable, the second showcased Maria at her most intransigent. She moved forward, varied her serve effectively, and even wrested away control of some rallies. She never took the lead, but just staying close enough to reach a tiebreaker seemed like a monumental achievement. Down match point on her serve at 4-5 in the second, Sharapova did what she does one more time: She let a forehand fly that caught the sideline and earned a racquet clap from her opponent.

“The match definitely got tough in the second set,” Serena said. “Maria started playing a lot better. She also started being a little more aggressive. It definitely got really interesting.”

So interesting that Serena, 15 straight wins or not, felt the pressure.

“Usually I’m just so on it and I feel like if I have to go for it, I go for it,” she said. “Last two [Slam finals] I’ve been a little nervous. I made some odd errors in the tiebreak that I normally wouldn’t miss because I got a little tight and I didn’t move.”

What do you do when you’re too nervous to move? If you’re Serena Williams, you win without moving. You serve your way to the title. At 2-2 in the second set, she hit three aces; at 3-3, she hit a service winner to swat away a break point, and an ace to hold; at 5-5, she hit an ace to hold; and in the tiebreaker, which she won 7-5, her two aces were the difference. No amount of fight could help Sharapova catch up to those missiles.

“I really want to go for it and I wanted to do everything I could to stay in those games and stay in the match,” Sharapova said. “You know, on that last one [match point], I couldn’t do much to get to that ball.”

“Maybe it’s something that has saved her in many matches,” Sharapova continued, referring to Serena’s serve. “I think when I did have the opportunities to get in the rally, I think I handled it quite well. But there’s not a lot of times in important situations where I could get in the rally.”

All of this may have sounded familiar, but there was one moment that felt new, and which was an example of where Serena has improved in recent years. At 3-3 in the second set, she hit what she thought was another ace. But as she screamed “Come on!” Sharapova reached out and popped a backhand return over the net. Serena was, rightly, called for a hindrance by chair umpire Alison Hughes, and the point was given to Sharapova. Serena accepted the penalty, settled back down, and eventually held.

Afterward, she was asked if she had ever had a hindrance called on her before. Serena smiled incredulously and asked back, “Do you follow tennis?”

It was the only appropriate response. How could anyone forget Serena’s enraged reaction the last time she was called for a hindrance, for doing the same thing in the 2011 U.S. Open final? This time, though, Serena was calm.

“I moved on very fast to the next point,” she said. “Just tried to stay as focused as I could.”

After the match, Serena thanked her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, and told him that she “was grateful to have you in my life.” Too much can be made of the effects that coaches have on their players. At this year’s Aussie Open, Tomas Berdych, who reached the semis with new mentor Dani Vallverdu, made sure to remind the press that it’s the execution, more than the plan, that’s the difficult part of tennis, and he was right. But I don’t think you can discount the positive effect that Mouratoglou has had. Serena has talked about his calming influence when she gets overwrought on court. Staying calm and finding a way to hold at 3-3 in the second set was a key to this win.

Finally, about that last ace. Having watched Serena enough times in moments like these, I felt like I knew she was going to end the match that way—she loves to win, and she loves to win on her terms even more. But did she know what was going to happen? Not according to her; a few seconds earlier, she had hit what she thought was an ace, only to have it called a let.

“I wasn’t confident at all,” Serena said. “I thought after the let, 'Man, I am not meant to win this tournament.' I was like, ‘C’mon. First of all, why [didn’t] I hear the let?' Then I was like, 'OK, do I go T. Do I go wide? What am I going to do?' Then I just tossed and served as hard as I could.”

The result was her 19th major championship. It also made her 19-4 in major finals; by comparison, Martina Navratilova was 18-14, Chris Evert 18-16, and Steffi Graf 22-9. Serena’s record is now 17-2 against Sharapova, who is the second-best player of this time period. Only Margaret Court, who went 24-5 in Slam finals, can match Serena's performances in the biggest matches. When it comes to beating her closest late-career competition, Williams stands alone.

Yet her thoughts haven’t changed much since her first Slam victory, at the U.S. Open in 1999. Serena has always cited a return of serve winner she hit in that match, against Martina Hingis, as a seminal moment in her career. She says she wondered for a minute what to do with the ball, before finally just stepping up and clocking it—that’s when she knew how she had to play. Sixteen years later, she’s still playing that way, still winning her own way, and still living up to all of our expectations.