The Williams sister carrying the more visible strapping defeated the one with a smidgin less plaster to win a championship that always had more to do with physical distress than classic tennis.

The women’s season has reached completion and the men have a month to go, but show a copy of this week’s labours to those in charge of the game and ask if they were happy with what they saw.

That the Williamses reached another final to face off against each other was a mathematical freak — Venus lost two of her round-robin matches and qualified for the weekend — yet they gave the fevered full house at the Sony Ericsson Championships in the Khalifa Complex here their 22nd match of unrestrained vigour, much noise and clubbing shots.

Another Serena victory, another reason to be thankful that the sisters have no intention of letting the grass grow under their feet.

At 29 and 28 respectively, Venus and Serena were the oldest in the eight-strong — if that is the right phrase — field that became ten because both the alternatives, Vera Zvonareva and Agnieszka Radwanska, were summoned from the substitutes’ bench to replace the injured Dinara Safina and Zvonareva herself. Serena had to defeat Venus twice inside five days — first in the qualifiers and in yesterday’s final 6-2, 7-6 — to cement her status as the finest player in the world and earn a massive $1.55 million (about £942,600) for five days’ work.

Serena’s serve was a monster yesterday. She dropped five points on it in the first set and two in the second before the tie-break decider that she clinched with a rasping, trademark forehand. It is all about peaking at the right time and at the beginning (Australian Open), middle (Wimbledon) and the end (Doha) of the year, she has been on fire. Venus, who had spent more than three hours longer reaching the final, was not equipped to handle little sister’s effervesence.

What will Mary Joe Fernandez, the United States Fed Cup captain, have made of this as she prepares to lead her country into the final next weekend in Italy? Serena had not parted from her equivocal determination to play until Friday, when she suddenly pulled the plug. There is not an Italian on earth who could live with her in this form, so why the change of heart?

Fernandez was taken aback to lose her No 1 player so close to the final and can only hope that her team can pull out a plum in Reggio Calabria.

Serena may watch the matches, but probably not. It is not that far from Thanksgiving and she has a nice little nest egg with which to invest in a few presents for her nearest and dearest.