Auckland teenager Marina Erakovic has capped off a great weekend for New Zealand women tennis players by winning the US$50,000 ($75,552) singles title at an event in Beijing.
The victory, a first at that level by a New Zealander since the 1980s, means Erakovic will become just the fourth Kiwi
woman to break the top-200 singles rankings.
Other top performers were 15-year-old Sacha Jones winning a junior title in Thailand and Leanne Baker moving into a doubles final in the United States which is being played this morning.
Erakovic, 18 and ranked at 219, defeated Russia's 141st-ranked Alla Kudryavtseva 6-2, 6-1 in the final after beating Taipei's Yung-Jan Chan, who is ranked 101, 6-4, 7-6 in her semifinal and former top-20 player Iroda Tulyaganova in straight sets in the quarter-finals.
The triumph in Beijing gives Erakovic a winning record of 18 from her last 19 matches after success at a US$25,000 event in the Netherlands, a semifinal result at a US$25,000 tournament in Victoria and a win at the US$25,000 event in Melbourne in successive weeks.
Jones captured the singles title at the Asia/Oceania Closed Championships in Bangkok on Saturday night.
She breezed past 16-year-old second seed Jessica Moore, from Perth and a top Australian prospect, 6-0, 6-2 in only 60 minutes.
The win will push Jones from her position of 15 to close to the top-10 junior rankings.
She already has a WTA senior ranking of 744.
Baker and Australian doubles partner Nicole Kriz, the fourth seeds at the US$25,000 Augusta Challenger, cruised into the final beating top seeds Fernanda Alves (Brazil) and Ukrainian Tetiana Luzhanska 7-5 6-1 in the semifinals.
They now play third seeds Channelle Scheepers (South Africa) and Neha Uberoi (USA) for the title.
The performances of the three New Zealand players have put them all in contention for main draw wildcards into January's ASB Classic.
