Flushing Meadows, she lost in the first round of singles qualifying to Wang Yafan. Rather surprisingly, she teamed up again with Parra Santonja to play doubles, winning the first-round match against Aleksandra Krunić and Andreea Mitu, but losing their second to 11th seeds Xu Yifang and Zheng Saisai. This was followed by losses in the first round at Seoul (to Patricia Maria Tig) and in the first qualifying round of the Premier tournament at Wuhan (to Louisa Chirico). She won both her qualifying singles matches in Hong Kong, but was beaten in a close match in the first round proper by Heather Watson, 7–5, 7–6. Partnered by local player Zhang Ling in the doubles, they won a tight first-round match before going down to the top-seeded Chan sisters from Taipei, the final score being 6–4, 6–3. Erakovic then took a short break before heading to Taipei for her first 125K series tournament, where she reached the semifinals before losing to local player Chang Kai-chen. The final tournament of the year was in Honolulu, where she lost in the second round to Zhang Shuai. The points she earned from these last two tournaments lifted her singles ranking to 105, the mark she was hoping to reach to guarantee a main draw slot for the Australian Open. 2017–18 Start of the year With her ranking being so low, Erakovic required a wildcard to enter the main draw of the first tournament of the year, the Auckland Open. Drawn against one of the leading juniors from 2016, Jelena Ostapenko, who was to find fame a few months later as the winner of the French Open, she was never comfortable as the young Latvian raced through the match to win 6–1, 6–2. She missed the Australian tournaments the following week, electing to go straight to Melbourne for the Australian Open. Drawn against seventh seed Garbiñe Muguruza, to whom she had lost at the same point two years earlier, she had a royal chance to reverse that result once it became clear that Muguruza was finding it very uncomfortable to play with a hamstring strain incurred in her previous match in Brisbane. Erakovic held a set point on Muguruza's serve at 5–4, but couldn't convert, and then dropped her own serve as Muguruza went on to take the first set 7–5. A long medical time-out followed before Muguruza reappeared with her thigh heavily strapped. Erakovic