AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki advanced to the quarterfinals of the ASB Tennis Classic on Wednesday, beating Petra Martic of Croatia 6-2, 6-2.
After taking 58 minutes to beat American Madison Brengle in her first-round match Tuesday, Wozniacki needed only 53 minutes to beat unseeded Martic, despite dropping her serve in the first game of the second set.
Wozniacki served strongly to take early control, winning 89 per cent of points on first serve and putting 90th-ranked Martic under pressure with deep groundstrokes which forced errors.
"I’m trying to stay aggressive," Wozniacki said. "I still made some unforced errors. It’s taking a few matches to play like 100 per cent but I still felt I played pretty well today."
Wozniacki broke Martic’s serve in the second and eighth games to take the first set in 24 minutes. She quickly recovered after dropping serve to open the second set, breaking back in the fourth and sixth games.
"I’ve worked on everything I need to work on in the off-season," Wozniacki said. "Now it’s just a matter of working out how to incorporate that into your match or into a situation where you maybe get nervous."
Second-seed Julia Goerges beat Viktoria Kuzmova 6-4, 4-0, third-seeded Barbora Strycova beat Johanna Larsson 6-1, 6-7 (3), 6-2 and Polona Herzog had a 6-4, 6-2 win over Kirsten Flipkens.
Strycova took more than three hours to beat Italy’s Sara Errani in her first-round match and needed almost 2-1/2 hours to move past Larsson.
In other results, Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan beat qualifier Ysaline Bonaventure and Sofia Kenin beat Varvara Lepchenko.
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