It might not have been painless, but it sure was quick. Serena Williams wasted no time in reducing Dinara Safina to tears. In just 58 minutes, the American captured her fourth Australian Open women’s singles championship by dismantling her Russian opponent, 6-0, 6-3, before a packed house at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.

The match began in perfect weather conditions, after a brutal heat wave finally left the scene of an eventful Australian summer. Between the painted lines, Williams’s level of play in this title tilt suggested that the extreme temperatures earlier in the week had hindered her performance, particularly in the first open-air set of her heat-interrupted quarterfinal match against Svetlana Kuznetsova. Given the 82-degree Fahrenheit (28 Celsius) temperature at the start of this match, a far cry from the 104 F/40 C reading that marked the Kuznetsova contest, Serena looked like a player who had fully and finally returned to her comfort zone.

Naturally, though, the weather–while blessedly mild–wasn’t the only reason Serena felt at home on the blue plexicushion surface of Melbourne Park. Saturday’s slaughter of Safina was also the product of a player who was immersed in her element: the final Saturday of a two-week Grand Slam event. When major titles are waiting to be claimed, and her sister is not the opponent, Serena Williams is money in the bank. Her foe on this Australian evening, the No. 3 seed and a rising force in the women’s game, discovered this truth painfully and personally in the land Down Under.

There wasn’t much to analyze in a match so mercifully brief and overwhelmingly decisive. Williams took the first set in just 22 minutes, losing only 8 points, and just two of them on serve. Safina’s first set was such a train wreck that the Russian–playing in her second slam final–couldn’t win a single one of her 10 second-serve points. Once Safina double-faulted away her first service game to give the American a 2-0 lead, one of the sport’s greatest closers proceeded to slam the door on Safina’s championship hopes.

The second set was only a bit more competitive. Safina actually held serve on two occasions, but only after Serena had established complete control at 4-1. Safina’s late holds made the final scoreline appear more competitive than the match actually was, as Serena used two dominating holds of her own to close out the match before anyone’s seat was warm in Laver Arena. Making only 7 unforced errors in two sets of tennis, Serena moved into seventh place on the all-time list of women’s Grand Slam singles champions. This fourth Aussie Open crown is the tenth major title for the younger Williams sister, enabling the 27-year-old from Compton, Calif., to pass Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly and Monica Seles. With two more slams in the remainder of her legendary career, Serena could tie Billie Jean King and Suzanne Lenglen (12 titles apiece) for sixth place. That’s pretty heady company, but when one considers how dominant Williams has been in major moments over the past several years, her status in the history of her sport is legitimately lofty.

The following statement–used on many occasions to describe Serena’s career–bears repeating in the wake of this flawless display against the saddened Safina, who was seen crying on court midway through the second set: Very simply, Serena Williams is the assassin of women’s tennis in the first decade of the 21st century. Her sister might be the queen of Wimbledon, and the recently retired Justine Henin might have made the most of her abilities (not to mention her short physical frame), but Serena is and has been the stone-cold professional who simply refuses to wilt in the biggest matches and the brightest spotlights.

On a somewhat more immediate level, this Australian Open marks the fourth time that Serena has not only won Down Under, but done so after being one game away from elimination at some point in the tournament. The fighting spirit shown in middle rounds–preceding a championship master class–has become a staple of Serena’s modus operandi. The ability to survive bad matches, and then soar in title fights, has defined the competitive spirit of this champion throughout her career.

On a larger level, this wipeout of Safina, the world’s No. 3 player, is noteworthy because it lifted Serena’s record in Grand Slam finals to a sterling 10-3. Serena’s detractors do–to a certain extent–have a valid point in wondering why the younger (and better) Williams sister hasn’t reached more slam finals, but when Serena does overcome middle-round messiness to reach the final weekend of a major tournament, she very rarely misses the mark. In a sport full of headcases (think of the aforementioned Kuznetsova) and shrinking violets (Lindsay Davenport, who always went deep into majors but very rarely won them), Serena is one of the few female tennis players who has shown the ability to consistently thrive in the pressure-packed environment of a championship match. Her sister and Henin are the only other players who could be counted on to regularly handle huge moments with grace and composure.

Speaking of grace and composure, those two qualities were missing for Safina, but while Marat Safin’s younger sister fell short in a bid for her first major title, the entirety of the 2009 Australian Open should be viewed in a distinctly positive way by the 22-year-old who is still learning how to deal with the pressure of being a high seed. The past two weeks rarely witnessed Safina’s best stuff, but an ample supply of determination–not to mention the even greater psychological frailty of fourth-round foe Alize Cornet–enabled Safina to reach another slam final. With yet another one of these experiences under her belt, Safina–besides walking away with a hefty runner-up paycheck in excess of $700,000–now has a better chance of handling her nerves when she reaches her next major final. This loss was ugly and dispiriting when viewed in isolation, but the ability to merely reach the final makes this tournament a forward-moving moment in Safina’s steadily progressing career.

In the end, Dinara Safina gained a learning experience on a brief Saturday evening in Melbourne. Serena Williams gained something much more from her hour of power: Grand Slam title number 10, and an even higher place in the history of women’s tennis.