Plan B keeps listless Serena in the race

MELBOURNE – With her serve misfiring and the ball coming back at her from some irregular angles, it was time for Serena Williams to go to Plan B.

Williams knuckled down and just scrapped her way to a 7-5, 6-4 win over No. 16-seeded Barbora Strycova on Monday to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open for the 11th time.

Despite the four service breaks – two in the first four games – and 46 unforced errors, and with the fluky net cord and the off-balance, scrunched-shoulder backhand that bounced flatly and clinched her the first set on her eighth set point, she ground down Strycova.

“It’s good to know I have a Plan B, or Option 2. I wasn’t serving my greatest today, also she was putting a lot of returns in there,” said Williams, who had a first-serve percentage of 45, and made four double-faults. “I feel like it was really good for me to win on probably not my best day, which is always good, because sometimes you rely on one shot and if it goes off, and then, like, what happens now?

“It was really good for me to almost lose that so I know my other game is going pretty good, too.”

That keeps Williams on track in her bid for an Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam title. If she gets there, the 35-year-old American will regain the No. 1 ranking as well from Angelique Kerber.

Meanwhile, Angelique Kerber’s title defense ended prematurely in a 6-2, 6-3 loss to American CoCo Vandeweghe in the fourth round on Sunday.

“I was not feeling the ball at all tonight,” Kerber said. “I was not playing good from the first point.”

Kerber hasn’t looked at all comfortable since the year began. She lost early in her two tune-up events for the Australian Open and struggled to find her rhythm in Melbourne once the tournament began, dropping sets in each of her first two matches.