Maria Sharapova dishes on rivalry with Serena Williams in new book

We love to toss about terms such as "girl power" and "the sisterhood" to signify the enduring solidarity of females, particularly as sexism and misogyny are on the rise.

Yet female rivalries exist, some real and some manufactured, some benign and some festering for decades like a malignant tumour.

Some rivalries, however, seem to exist only in the minds of the aggrieved. Case in point: Maria Sharapova versus Serena Williams.

One of the juiciest bits of Sharapova's new memoir, Unstoppable: My Life So Far, is a chronicle of her feelings concerning Williams, whom she beat at the 2004 women's Wimbledon final in a shock upset.

She claimed she heard Williams crying in the locker room after that; from that moment, she believed, Williams was out to crush her at every opportunity.

And crush her she did.

Since that surprise Wimbledon victory, Sharapova has won only one other match against Williams. Their score is 19 victories to 2 in Williams' favour.

Sharapova, nevertheless, continues to think about Williams to the point of obsession. Even before they actually met, Williams loomed large in Sharapova's imagination, but the younger player, by her own admission, refused to "put myself in the position of worshipping them [Serena and sister Venus], looking up, being a fan."

Healthy rivalries have their benefits, especially in competitive sport. But Sharapova's memoirs, while candid, reveal an inordinate amount of antagonism towards Williams: "But to me, the real answer was there, in this locker room, where I was changing and she was bawling. I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her, against all odds, at Wimbledon."

All this obsessing seems like a sad waste of energy on the part of Sharapova. It's unlikely Williams has fixated on Sharapova with the same intensity, unless it's in preparation for a match, which Williams would probably win anyway. Because Williams is the better player, and if Sharapova's memoirs are anything to go by, the better person as well.

Game, set, match Williams.

• This article was originally published in The Times.