PARIS, France (AFP) — Serena Williams set up a mouth-watering French Open showdown against bitter rival Maria Sharapova on Saturday as Rafael Nadal kept his bid for an 11th title on track with a 16th successive win over childhood pal Richard Gasquet.

Three-time champion Williams made a nonsense of her 451 world ranking to reach the last-16 with a ruthless 6-3, 6-4 romp past German 11th seed Julia Goerges.

Sharapova, the 2012 and 2014 winner in Paris, was equally impressive, seeing off Czech sixth seed Karolina Pliskova 6-2, 6-1.

Sharapova and Williams have met 21 times, with the American leading the head-to-head record 19-2 after 18 consecutive wins.

The Russian has not beaten her nemesis since 2004 — before even the birth of Twitter and YouTube.

Williams, the champion in 2002, 2013 and 2015 and playing her first Slam since giving birth to her daughter in September, last played a major at the Australian Open in 2017 while two months pregnant.

Playing again in her striking all-black catsuit, the 36-year-old fired 20 winners past Goerges while committing just 12 unforced errors, three of which were in the first set.

“I think there is a lot of things in her game that she’s done much better than I have… Numbers don’t lie,” admitted Sharapova of facing her fellow former world number one.

Their most recent clash was at the 2016 Australian Open — it was also to be Sharapova’s last match before serving a 15-month doping ban.

Five-time Grand Slam champion Sharapova hadn’t played on Court Philippe Chatrier since a quarter-final exit in 2015.

However, she made up for lost time by firing 18 winners past an under-cooked Pliskova in just under an hour.