After getting broken in three of her first four service games, Serena Williams managed return to her winning ways and defeat 16th seed Barbora Strycova 7-5, 6-4.

Due to Coco Vandeweghe’s win over world No.1 Angelique Kerber on Sunday, Williams is now the highest-ranked player remaining in the Australian Open.

If Williams wins the tournament, not only will she surpass Steffi Graf’s record for the most Open-era Grand Slams, she will also take the WTA No. 1 ranking back from Kerber.

No.1 Scenario is pretty simple. Serena Williams can retake the No.1 ranking by winning the #AusOpen title.

— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) January 22, 2017

The first part of the match was highly confusing, with each of the first four games resulting in a break of serve. It was not until the fifth game that Williams finally held to go up 3-2.

But that momentum did not last long. On Williams’s very next service game, a backhand pass from Strycova and a few unforced errors from Williams allowed Strycova to break for a 4-3 lead.

Williams broke back in classic Serena fashion, though, evening the set at 4-4. She then held for 5-4, meaning Strycova would need to win her next service game in order to stay in the set.

By exploiting Williams’s backhand, Strycova saved a total of four set points in the process of tying the frame up at 5-5.

Williams then served her way to an easy hold, making the score 6-5 and putting Strycova in another must-hold situation.

This time around, Williams got the score to 0-40, giving herself three set points, all of which she failed to convert. But then at deuce, Williams crushed a backhand return for a winner, and proceeded to win the set with another backhand winner on the ad-out point that followed. This gave her the set at 7-5.

The second set was more straightforward, with the first break not coming until the fourth game, which Williams won after Strycova missed a forehand volley into the net.

Then in the ninth game, after each player held twice more, Williams missed a forehand wide to reduce her lead to 5-4 and put the set back on serve.

But she rendered that blunder meaningless in the next game by braking right back to win the set 6-4 and advance to the quarterfinals.

“After winning so much, now everything for me is a bonus, it’s relaxing,” Williams said in her on-court interview. 

Williams, in her next match, will face ninth seed Johanna Konta, who bested Ekaterina Makarova 6-1, 6-4 by digging herself out of a 1-4 deficit in the second set.