STANFORD, CALIF. — It’s been the most futile of the four majors for Agnieszka Radwanska, the one Grand Slam at which she’s never had much second-week street cred. In fact, she’s never ventured beyond the fourth round in Flushing Meadows. But that doesn’t mean she’s abandoned all hopes of one day raising the trophy skyward at the US Open.

It’s not as if Radwanska hasn’t had any memorable moments on the New York cement. Who could forget 2007, the year the Pole, then but an 18-year-old upstart, shocked defending champ Maria Sharapova in the white-hot spotlight of Arthur Ashe Stadium? But in nine years of competing at the Open, Radwanska has fallen in the second round on five occasions.

“I’m trying every year to have better results there,” said Radwanska, currently No. 7 on the WTA charts. “Hopefully, this year it will be better.”

The good news? The 26-year-old doesn’t have many points to defend from last year, when she fell in the second round to eventual semifinalist Shuai Peng of China 6-3, 6-4.

“Last year, I actually felt pretty good,” she said. “I thought I was playing really good tennis. But sometimes you don’t have an easy draw. I played Peng, and she had an amazing run.”

Is it the calendar? Is her body just too worn down by the time the US Open rolls around? Is it the cacophonic bedlam that is the Big Apple? Is it the heat and humidity of August?

“It’s pretty much everything,” she confessed. “It’s always strange. But everybody has some tournaments where they’re not really doing great. Unfortunately for me, it’s the US Open.”

A day after she was originally scheduled to kick off her American hard-court campaign (the Pole pushed back her opener in order to nurse an unknown injury), Radwanska moved into the Bank of the West Classic quarterfinals on Thursday afternoon via an uneven 1-6, 6-2, 6-0 decision over Japanese qualifier Misaki Doi. As the scoreline suggests, Radwanska clearly needed to shake some rust, but once she found her rhythm the outcome was all but a formality. Trailing 6-1, 2-0, she reeled off the next 12 games to close out the contest in just under an hour-and-a-half.

The exact nature of that mysterious injury?

“I think I’ll just keep it to myself and try to figure out how to play here,” deflected Radwanska, who sported a metallic silver Lotto outfit that she appropriately likened to “a disco ball.”

“I love that dress,” she said with grin. “It’s just very different than the other dresses.  I think, for the U. S. swing, it’s pretty nice. It’s very comfortable as well. I have a new dress for next week, I think even better than that, so you’ll have to check it out.”

You can bet she has a shiny new dress picked out for the US Open, too. And what better way to come into the final Grand Slam of 2015 than dressed for success?