Marina Erakovic has moved safely through to the second round of the WTA event in Stanford after a comfortable 6-2 6-2 win over Slovakian qualifier Jana Juricova this morning (NZT).
The New Zealand No 1 was untroubled on serve, even though she got a lowly 47 per cent of her first serves in, facing only one break point. In contrast, she broke Juricova five times in a match lasting 71 minutes.
She will play the winner of the match between Eleni Daniilidou (Greece) and Urszula Radwanska (Poland) and is seeded to meet former world No 1 Jelena Jankovic in the third round.
Erakovic, ranked 50 in the world, is the eighth seed for the US$740,000 tournament headlined by Wimbledon champion Serena Williams.
She will play her first-round doubles match later today when she teams up with Great Britain's Heather Watson against Sesil Karatantcheva (Kazakhstan) and Erika Sema (Japan).