When the music stopped, the seats filled and the match began, Williams went on defense, relentlessly chasing down one shot after another to defeat familiar foil Maria Sharapova. With a 6-4, 6-4 victory, the No. 1-ranked Williams won her first French Open championship since 2002.

"Eleven years," Williams said in French during the trophy ceremony. "I think it's unbelievable. Now I have 16 Grand Slam titles. It's difficult for me to speak because I'm so excited."

Then the national anthem played for the first American singles champion at Roland Garros since Williams' previous title.

Williams whacked 10 aces, including three in the final game, and the last came on match point at 123 mph — her hardest serve of the day. She then sank to her knees, screamed at the sky and buried her face in the clay.

The victory completed her rebound from a shocking loss to 111th-ranked Virginie Razzano in the first round at the French Open a year ago. Since that defeat she's 74-3, including titles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the London Olympics and the season-ending WTA Championships.

Both finalists swung with their typical aggressiveness from the baseline, but Williams' superior serve and defense proved the difference. She silently ran side to side whipping groundstrokes with little apparent strain, while Sharapova often found herself lunging after the ball to stay in the point, with each shot accompanied by her familiar shriek.

When Williams once summoned a grunt herself to match Sharapova's volume and pound a winner, the crowd responded with a laugh.

Sharapova completed a career Grand Slam by winning Roland Garros last year, but she's still looking for a breakthrough against Williams, who has won their past 13 meetings since 2004.

"I played a great tournament and I ran into a really tough champion today," Sharapova said.

Lately Williams beats everyone. She extended her career-best winning streak to 31 matches.

At 31, she became the oldest woman to win a major title since Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon in 1990 at age 33. Her 11-year gap between Roland Garros titles is the longest for any woman.

Williams, who has a home in Paris, is already thinking about winning again next year.

"I love Paris," she said. "I spend a lot of time here. I live here. I practice here. I think I am a Parisian."

Williams also congratulated Sharapova during the ceremony.

"She played a beautiful final," Williams said in French. "She's a great champion. I hope to be with her again next year."

"Merci beaucoup," Sharapova responded with a laugh.

In an all-Spanish final Sunday, Rafael Nadal will try to become the first man to win eight titles at the same Grand Slam event when he plays first-time major finalist David Ferrer.

The women's final, the first between No. 1 and No. 2 at a Grand Slam tournament since 2004, wasn't as close as their rankings. It has been 12 years since the most recent three-set women's title match at Roland Garros.

Playing in hazy, warm weather, the finalists took ferocious swings from the start. With fans perhaps fearful that Williams would win quickly, they began shouting encouragement toward Sharapova after she lost the first two points.

She overcame four break points to hold in the opening game and led 2-0 before Williams began to assert herself. It took Williams 17 minutes to win a game, but then she swept four in a row.

After Sharapova took the next two for 4-all, Williams surged at the end of the set, taking the lead for good by winning eight of the final 10 points.

Sharapova had to dig in again to hold at the start of the second set, fending off five break points, and it was all downhill for her from there. Williams easily held serve all the way to the finish.

She improved to 16-4 in Grand Slam finals. She leads all active women with her 16 major titles and is sixth on the all-time list. Margaret Court holds the record with 24.

Williams improved to 43-2 this year, including 23-0 on clay. Now comes the switch to grass, and she'll be a heavy favorite to win Wimbledon for the sixth time.

1. Serena Williams won this tournament because of consistent dominance. Saturday’s scoreline suggests that, like all of Williams’s matches these two weeks, there was little doubt over the outcome. That’s not totally true — Williams was broken on her first service game — but the feeling throughout was Sharapova was fighting an uphill battle. A pretty unwinnable one, too. Williams broke Sharapova three times in the first set and again in Sharapova’s second service game in the second set. She stayed on course to close it out in one hour, 46 minutes, dropping to her knees after match point, overcome with emotion on the Court Philippe Chatrier clay.

The difference was succinct: the serve — Williams’s was too powerful, Sharapova’s too erratic. Williams captured her 16th major singles title (and second French Open, 11 years to the day after her first, over sister Venus) by mowing through a women’s field in a little over eight hours on court. Only 2009 French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova took a set off Williams, and Sharapova was the only other player to even break her serve.

It’s hard to believe Williams went out in the first round here last year. She’s lost just three matches since and is on a 31-match winning streak. She’s in better form (compared to her peers) going into the grass-court season than at any point in her career. What, if anything, can stop her from lifting a sixth Wimbledon next month? To quote Williams from before the French Open began, “the lady in the mirror.”

2. Sharapova put up a better fight than many thought she would. Few gave the Russian a chance, given she hadn’t beaten Williams in nearly nine years, losing their last 12 meetings (and winning just one set in their last nine). And Sharapova’s quick demise seemed apparent after the first three points, when she went down love-40 on her serve, being bullied around by Williams as usual.

But Sharapova fought back this time and even took an early break. Her come ons to winners ratio was nearly 1:1. She showed — quite audibly — she was not intimidated. Her Achilles heel first serve, however, could not hold up in gusty conditions. Williams had break chances on each of Sharapova’s first three service games. Sharapova landed fewer than half of her first serves in the opening set, a 51-minute affair when she came pretty close to matching Williams stroke for stroke from the baseline.

Many recent women’s finals have the reputation of being duds, unsettling appetizers for the following day’s men’s final. But this was certainly competitive in comparison and could end up being more memorable than Sunday’s final between Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer.

This was the first No. 1 vs. No. 2 in a women’s major final at Roland Garros since 1995 (Steffi Graf d. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario) and the first in any major since the 2004 Australian Open (Justine Henin d. Kim Clijsters). The state of the women’s game didn’t change Saturday — it’s still Williams, then Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka, then the rest — but Sharapova made Williams work for it. Again, better than expected.

3. Is Williams the best player of this generation — man or woman? She won her 16th career Grand Slam singles title, moving her two behind Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert for a share of fourth all-time among women. She’s still eight majors behind record holder Margaret Court, who raked in 11 Australian Open titles against less than stellar competition. That record is almost surely insurmountable.

Of more realistic note, she’s now only one behind Roger Federer’s men’s record. Federer and Williams were born within seven weeks of each other in 1981, so it’s natural to compare the two most accomplished players of this century.

Williams missed at least one major every year from 1999 to 2006 (save 2001) and then three straight in 2010 and 2011 after she stepped on glass in a restaurant, suffered a pulmonary embolism and had complications from surgery. Federer, meanwhile, has played every single major since 2000. During that time, we’ve seen the pendulum swing from a deep field of WTA stars to a golden era of the men’s side. Federer had little competition at the beginning of his run, and now Williams stands alone.

Federer struck out in the quarterfinals here and it’s arguable whether he can win another major. It would be stunning if Williams’s trophy case doesn’t grow. She looked better at the 2013 French Open than at the 2002 French Open. A scary thought considering she’s the oldest-ever No. 1. There’s no doubt Williams has aged better than Federer. If trends continue, there will be no doubt who had the better career, either.