By Neal Collins

The critics will be split.

Half will argue that Serena Williams' 7-6, 6-3 win over big sister Venus was a sensational women's final.

The other half will feel Wimbledon was somehow cheated by this increasingly familiar family affair.

Just as Serena triumphed at the last Grand Slam final over Venus at the French Open, so she cruised home here, claiming her third major triumph and her first at the All England club.

Venus, attempting to make it three in a row and a fourth Grand Slam, simply had no answer to her smaller but more powerful sister.

Venus, at 6ft 1in, appeared to be doing all she could against her 5ft 10in sibling.

And, just as the broadsheet papers lauded Tim Henman for his brave defeat at the hands of Lleyton Hewitt on Friday, so the posh tennis writers will record an epic women's final which ebbed and flowed but was always headed Serena's way.

The tabloids won't like it.

Not one bit.

They gave Tiger Tim a right going over after his straight-sets defeat at the hands of the shaven-headed world No 1 Hewitt.

And they'll claim that this straight-sets, all-too-brief final was orchestrated by the eccentric Richard Williams, perhaps the most controversial tennis dad in a sport ruled by strange men and their stressed daughters.

Richard is different.

He set out to produce two daughters who would rule the tennis world, and - against all the odds – he has succeeded in his fantastic quest.

He coached the girls using videos and street knowledge, taking them to public courts in the tough Los Angeles district of Compton, where drive-by shootings interrupted the rallies.

With no real knowledge or qualifications, Mr Williams created two wonderful teenage tennis players.

A miracle.

Then he withdrew them from tournament play until their schooling had been completed.

Going in to this final, Serena listed her greatest achievement as "scoring an A in Geometry".

No doubt that has changed.

When daddy let his daughters loose on the tennis world after graduation, the world of women's tennis began to change.

Rapidly.

First Steffi Graf and then Martina Hingis faded from the scene as the Sister Act became a habit.

They were too small, too precise.

Power and pace became the order of the day.

Then Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati, two of the biggest hitters ever seen in the women's game, tried to break the stranglehold.

Their success is growing steadily more limited.

Saturday saw the third all-Williams Grand Slam final in 10 months.

And it won't be the last.

Not by a long chalk.

The thing is, whenever they meet each other we are reminded of Richard's early ravings, when he suggested it was sometimes best if one daugher triumphed over the other rather than leaving these things in the hands of pure competition.

Amelie Mauresmo, dumped out in the semi-final by Venus, argued exactly that we could expect a fix while John Lloyd said simply: "Nobody can prove anything. But they haven't produced great tennis against each other so far."

Underlying all this bickering is a general recognition that Venus and Serena have taken the women's game to new heights.

Sadly they are not the kind of heights the marketing men dream of.

They want svelte young things like Anna Kournikova and Hingis patting the ball backwards and forwards over the net with a cute waggle of the bottom.

They don't want the Williams battling it out with big girls like Mauresmo and Davenport.

And that is what lies at the heart of this argument, just as it did when Martina Navratilova took over from Chris Evert.

Nobody can argue whether the Williams sisters deserve to be numbers one and two in the women's game.

Nobody can argue that it is difficult to play a brother or sister in serious competition.

But there will be no sympathy, no outpouring of affection for the Williams clan.

Even the fans appear ambivalent.

I guess it's hard to give your wholehearted backing to one sister or the other the way we are used to do with Bjorn Borg v John McEnroe or Pete Sampras v Andre Agassi, Martina Navratilova v Chris Evert or Graf v Monica Seles.

So you can expect the broadsheets to debate the validity of the all-Williams clashes and the red-top tabloids will find new, insulting things to say about the sisters, their dad and the fabulous hair of their mum.

But we had best not be too harsh on this family of Amazons.

Venus is 22, Serena is 20.

They may be with us for some time.

Me?

I think they're magnificent.

Do you agree? Send your views on the Williams sisters to:

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