Not for nearly a decade has Serena Williams lost to Maria Sharapova, who stunned her at the Wimbledon final in 2004.  Serena recorded her 15th consecutive victory over the four-time major champion at the Sony Open on Thursday, improving to 4-0 in her career against Sharapova at that tournament.  The victory sent the world No. 1 into her ninth Miami final, where she will seek a seventh title that would mark her most among all tournaments.

Despite Serena's long-standing stranglehold over this matchup, Sharapova brought a strong competitive effort to this semifinal.  Disaster loomed at the outset when she fell behind 15-40 in each of her first two service games, striking a double fault in each of them.  But Sharapova erased all four of those break points and broke Serena shortly afterward.  When she led 4-1, eyebrows began to raise. 

Serena's response came immediately in the form of reeling off five straight games to take the first set.  Most of the games reached 30-30 or deuce, suggesting that they could have tilted in either direction.  Here, the American's long winning streak over Sharapova probably aided her in winning the key points.  So did her much more effective serve, always a key advantage for Serena against the Russian.

Still, the match never became one of the routs that we have grown accustomed to seeing in this matchup.  The second set followed a similar script to the first as Sharapova jumped out to an early lead.  A long deuce game on her serve ended with a double fault on break point, however, and Serena never looked back.  Having won the last five games of the first set, she won six of the last seven games in the second set.  Sharapova fought to the finish, even erasing a 40-0 lead in Serena's last service game.  But the American's eighth ace snuffed out that final threat, and she closed out the victory by breaking serve after yet another multiple-deuce game.

In the final, Serena will face either Li Na or Dominika Cibulkova, who square off in the second semifinal tonight.  She holds a combined 14-1 lead against those two women, so she will enter Saturday's final as the heavy favorite.  A title in Miami, her home tournament, would quiet the concerns surrounding Serena's form after losses to Ana Ivanovic and Alize Cornet at her two previous events.

Although she lost yet again to her nemesis, Sharapova finished the Miami tournament on a higher note than she started it.  A loss to qualifier Camila Giorgi at Indian Wells, where she defended a title, left her needing a positive result at the last significant hard-court event of the spring.  Sharapova produced her best result since returning from a six-month injury absence by reaching a Premier Mandatory semifinal and recording a victory over a top-10 opponent (Petra Kvitova).

Fans of women's tennis still need to look elsewhere than these two women for a genuine rivalry, but at least both stars have started to turn the seasons in the right direction after shaky starts.