MELBOURNE, Australia -- Defending champion Jennifer Capriati escaped with a 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 victory over Eleni Daniilidou on Saturday to reach the fourth round of the Australian Open.

	Jennifer Capriati celebrates after beating Eleni Daniilidou on Saturday.

Playing with both hips bandaged, the usually aggressive Capriati was on the defensive in losing the second set. When she lost her opening service game of the third, Capriati appeared to be in danger of being upset by Daniilidou.

But Capriati took advantage of errors by the 81st-ranked Daniilidou to win the last six games.

"She was a tough opponent today," Capriati said. "I've never played this girl before ... I had no idea what she was going to do. It was important for me to pull through this one."

The 19-year-old Daniilidou, who climbed the rankings from No. 320 last year, led 1-0 and 40-30 in the final set before committing two errors and then watching a forehand volley from Capriati go by. She won just six more points in the final five games.

Capriati completed a successful comeback from personal problems by winning her first Grand Slam event at last year's Australian Open. She also won the French Open and was a semifinalist at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

Troubled by hip strains for the past two weeks, Capriati also called for attention from a trainer several times during the match and had both thighs heavily strapped.

Capriati later played down the extent of the right hip flexor strain and said the trainer was merely adjusting the strapping which had begun to rub and cause rashes on her skin.

"It was more of a cosmetic thing that had to be done," she told reporters.

In other women's play, No. 4 Kim Clijsters, last year's French Open runner-up, beat Australian wild-card entry Cindy Watson 6-1, 6-2; No. 7 Amelie Mauresmo, the 1999 runner-up, beat Thailand's Tamarine Tanasugarn 7-6 (3), 6-1; Germany's Marlene Weingartner upset No. 10 Meghann Shaughnessy 6-2, 3-6, 6-3; No. 12 Elena Dementieva beat No. 23 Magui Serna 6-1, 6-2 No. 20 Rita Grande beat No. 16 Iroda Tulyaganova 6-3, 5-7, 6-4; and Janette Husarova defeated No. 24 Ai Sugiyama 6-2, 6-3.

Mauresmo next plays Weingartner, who never before had gone beyond the third round of a Grand Slam event.

Weingartner broke serve in the eighth game of the final set and then served out the match with two aces, a forehand winner and a forehand miss by Shaughnessy, who walked off and hurled her racket down in disgust.

Shaughnessy gave Weingartner 10 break chances in the final set, and she converted two of them.

Information from Reuters was used in this report.