The future of the sport went toe-to-toe with one of its current—and greatest—champions in a riveting final.

In her first two tournaments of 1999 in Australia, Serena Williams—long-pegged as a potential star despite her young age—suffered early-round defeats to Steffi Graf and Sandrine Testud. But those three-set losses were as close as you can get, and just as easily could have gone in the American’s favor.

Perhaps buoyed by the scorelines against two veterans, Williams went into her next tournament on a mission and won her first career singles title at the Paris Indoors. Her following tournament was the Evert Cup in Indian Wells (which would later become the BNP Paribas Open).

In the final, she would face one of the greatest players of all time, Steffi Graf. Even though the German had been away from the top spot for a few years at this point, she was still a threat to win any tournament she entered. The fifth seed only dropped one set on the way to the title match.

In their first encounter in Sydney earlier in the year, Graf won the match in three sets. This time, it was Williams who struck first, winning the first set 6-3. In the second, Graf evened things up, by the same score, 6-3.

In the decider, it appeared that Graf’s experience would be the difference maker. She went up an early break to lead 3-1. Williams managed to bounce back to 4-all. The two went past the 5-all stage, and Graf tried to push it to a third-set tiebreak, serving at 5-6. However, her legendary forehand let her down twice and she was broken, giving the young Williams the second title of her career.

4

On her way to the title, Williams defeated four of the top 16 seeds, including world No. 2 Lindsay Davenport in the second round.

35

Williams hit 35 winners, more than three times as many as Graf's 11.

143

The Indian Wells title match in 1999 was Graf’s 143rd appearance in a singles final. It would turn out to be the last one she contested outside of the Grand Slam level.