A history of Venus and Serena Williams being awesome together

Venus and Serena Williams will square off against each other for the 27th time at the US Open on Tuesday. It’s never easy to face your sister, but the match is even more fraught with tension than usual. A Venus win would dash Serena’s hopes of tying Steffi Graf’s Grand Slam record and of getting her first-ever calendar year Grand Slam. A Serena win would continue what has to be a painful string of losses for Venus in recent years. It’s almost too much to handle. Venus and Serena’s mother can’t even stand to watch the match.

So instead of dwelling on that psychological viper pit, we decided to look back on an altogether sunnier side of the Venus-and-Serena era: their absolutely towering joint career together in doubles matches.

While the Williams sisters have battled each other plenty, they’ve also racked up a mindblowingly dominant record as a doubles unit, winning 21 different titles with each other. The stats are staggering: three gold medals, five Wimbledon championships, four Australian Open titles, and on and on and on.