Williams in her sights again

Struggling to find her rhythm in the opening seven weeks of the season, Angelique Kerber is confident she is only a match or two away from rediscovering it and hopes it will happen here this week in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.

With 900 points on offer for the winner, Kerber (7,115 points) can reclaim the No 1 ranking from Serena Williams (7,780) if she goes all the way here.

Defeated in the fourth round of the Australian Open by CoCo Vandeweghe, Kerber has won only one of her four matches in the other three tournaments.

The No 1 ranking, then, will not really be at the top of Kerber’s list for this week in Dubai, a tournament where she has won only one of her five main draw matches against Svetlana Kuznetsova in the 2015 second round.

“I still have the same team around me and I know how to get back I think it’s just like going out there and playing matches, and winning matches again.” She defeated Williams in the Australian Open final and then reached the final at Wimbledon and the Rio Olympics before winning her second major title at the US Open to march ahead of Williams on the ranking table.