Angelique Kerber was a very much unfamiliar name at Melbourne Park until 2016.

When she clinched the Australian Open title that year, she ended her streak of bowing out at the first few rounds in Melbourne. From then on, she would be pitted as one of the top competitors in the women’s field.

Things could not have been better when she added another Grand Slam title to her record: the 2016 US Open. She was shot to stardom, and many were anticipating a successful season for the German in 2017.

However, every high must eventually have a low.

Kerber would face a slump in form that would see her fail to reach even the quarter-finals of any Grand Slam in 2017. She fell out of the top 20, lost in the early rounds of most of the tournaments she entered, and seemed to have lost her punch on the tennis circuit.

But to stay at the top, one must fight his or her way through. And that was what Kerber did, maybe as her New Year’s Resolution in 2018.

She is currently on a 10-match winning streak. Having lifted the Sydney International title a few weeks back, she looked very much in form heading into the Australian Open. There were certainly doubts lingering amongst analysts and fans to see if she can recuperate from her poor performance in 2017. But Kerber has not given them anything to critique or fear as she advances into the late stages in Melbourne Park.

Being the only former winner in the draw left, Kerber has led the charge and shrugged these expectations off easily. She has only dropped a set so far (against Hsieh Su-Wei in round four) and since then, has displayed fine form and play, sweeping past her quarter-final opponent -Madison Keys- with ease. Even her matches in the first few rounds were pretty much one-sided, the most impressive of them against the Russian fighter Maria Sharapova, whom Kerber defeated soundly 6-1 6-3 and hushed her deafening grunts.

Moving comfortably into the semi-finals, higher hopes are now pinned on the German to lift the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup. But she has to navigate around the winner of the Halep-Pliskova encounter, both of which are very tricky opponents that may obstruct Kerber’s path to the 2018 title.

Yet, we can be hopeful that she will put up a fierce fight. As a left-handed player, her aggressive baseline groundstrokes would pose some challenges to her upcoming challengers.

While it is still too early to conclude that Kerber has had a fine form and will continue to do so in 2018, avid fans will hope that she continues her destructive display to wow more players and followers of the sport and have much more Grand Slam success.

Even in odd-numbered years (which she has not yet clinched a Grand Slam title in one).