With Angelique Kerber’s loss, Serena Williams became the highest remaining seed in the women’s draw.  She entered Melbourne in search of her 7th Australian Open crown and she is seeking her 23rd grand slam title which would surpass Steffi Graf as the most in the modern era. She took a step towards reaching those goals as she dispatched Barbora Strycova 7-5, 6-4.

In the first set, neither player was successful in protecting their service games as they combined for seven service breaks. But the American prevailed in a tight set despite the scrappy Strycova pushing the two-seed.

Williams gained an early break in the second set and maintained her edge. But serving for the match at 5-3, Strycova broke serve once more and looked to even the set on her serve. However, the 35-year old bounced right back, breaking the Czech’s serve to close out the match.

“She’s hard to read, she’s scrappy, gets a lot of balls back. She definitely plays a different game than the other three players I played before,” Williams said. “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.”

The win sets up a quarterfinal match with Johanna Konta who is playing at a high-level. The nine-seed continued her impressive play, defeating Ekaterina Makarova 6-1 6-4.

Elsewhere, it was Rafael Nadal advancing into the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 victory against Gael Monfils.

In the first set, Nadal benefitted from 17 unforced errors by the Frenchman and gained the one service break he would need to take the set.

The Spaniard was rolling early in the second set as he broke serve quickly and took the edge. But Monfils finally became engaged breaking back to even the set. But any success in the set was short-lived as Nadal won the next three games to gain the two-set advantage.

Nadal kept Monfils off balance with his first serve throughout most of the match. But in the third set, serving at 4-4, he wavered ever so slightly allowing an opening for the Frenchman who took advantage with the break. And the quirky one followed up the impressive game with an adventurous service game where he recovered from a 0-40 hole and ultimately closed out the set.

Monfils seized the momentum in the fourth set with a break to gain a 3-2 advantage. And play appeared to be heading in his direction until Nadal would dig deep to break back to even the set at 4-4. He would consolidate the break and with Monfils serving to stay in the match, Nadal would overcome a 30-0 deficit to break Monfils and take the match.

“For me, it means a lot because I really start the season playing quarter-finals in a grand slam again, especially on a hard court (and) after a couple of years without being in this round is great news,” Nadal said. “Very happy with an important victory against a very good opponent.

Nadal will advance to play 3rd-seed Milos Raonic who defeated Roberto Bautista Agut in four sets.

A look at the quarterfinal matchups:

Women’s Draw

Coco Vandeweghe vs. (7) Garbine Muguruza

(13) Venus Williams vs. (24) Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

(5) Karolina Pliskova vs. Mirjana Lucic-Baroni

(2) Serena Williams vs. (9) Johanna Konta

Men’s Draw

Mischa Zverev vs. (17) Roger Federer

(4) Stan Wawrinka vs. (12) Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

(9) Rafael Nadal vs. (3) Milos Raonic

(11) David Goffin vs. (15) Grigor Dimitrov