Stop me if you've heard this one before: Sisters from an impoverished area rise to global prominence as racket sport champions. Both rivals and doubles partners, the younger, more aggressive sister enjoys the higher world ranking. While this describes tennis' Serena and Venus Williams, a new generation of racket-wielding sisters are putting their own spin on the narrative. Substitute Arecibo, Puerto Rico for Compton, California and you have the setting for Adriana and Melanie Diaz' origin story. Older sister Melanie, now 23, is enjoying a career-high ranking of #88 in the world. Even better, yesterday she won the first ever gold medal for Puerto Rico at the Pan American Games. She did so with her little sister Adriana in the women's doubles event in Lima, Peru, overcoming the top-seeded duo of Lily Zhang and Wu Yue of the United States in a seesaw battle, (7-11, 11-8, 10-12, 11-7, 6-11, 11-8, 11-8). Adriana, ranked 30th in the world at 18 years of age, was not done collecting gold for her homeland. In today's women's singles final, she again faced the United States' Wu Yue, herself not far behind at world #35. As in the doubles, Adriana had the upper hand, cruising to a 4-1 victory. Her sister Melanie, who had lost to Wu in the semifinal, had to put her personal disappointment aside to root for her sister and her home team. “I couldn’t let her see me sad, because she was going to get sad,” said Melanie. “I needed to be strong. I yelled out as much as I could to support her from the stands.” Both Williams sisters, and more often Venus, can surely relate to this bittersweet experience. With the win, Adriana also directly qualified for her second straight Olympics. “Yesterday, we had a great time," said Adriana. "Today is one of the best days of my life.” With such riveting results, it is no wonder that traditionally baseball-mad Puerto Rico is taking notice of another bat sport. “Our national sport is baseball ... but people are now watching table tennis," marveled Melanie. "They’re back home now watching table tennis on TV. And that’s something that you never saw before. It’s amazing.” In the course of capturing the hearts and minds of a sports-loving nation, it is understandable that people would try to put their binary ascent in a historical context. “We’ve often been compared, like the two sisters who are growing up together for the sport that they always worked and dreamed of,” Adriana related. While it is admittedly facile to compare the Diaz sisters to the Williams sisters, Adriana is happy to be mentioned in the same breath with the dynamic duo. “That feels amazing," Adriana admitted. "Serena is a legend, and so is Venus. Any comparison to them makes me proud.”

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