The Americans were two of seven seeds to win at the Family Circle Tennis Centre, where the claycourt season resumes en route to Roland Garros.

Capriati struggled early before cruising to a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Russian Lina Krasnoroutskaya. Davenport also had her problems before defeating Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Montenegro 7-5, 6-3.

"I was just pretty aggressive and pretty focused the whole match and really played well," Capriati said.

"Even when she was running me around, I was able to get back her shots and then took the opportunity, so overall I think it went really well."

Davenport wasn't expecting such a tough first-round match.

"I thought she played very, very well," Davenport said.

"I thought a lot of the errors I made I was forced into them because she got so many balls back -- and at the same time was pretty aggressive herself -- and felt like I had to do a lot of running out there."

Capriati ran herself into a third-round encounter with Petra Mandula of Hungary as she seeks her second Family Circle Cup title. She won in 2001, 11 years after losing to Martina Navratilova in the final.

A 14-time winner on the WTA Tour, Capriati is competing in just her fourth event of the year, although she has practiced a lot in the past couple of weeks.

"Not only just drilling but played a lot of points and just to really get into that mind-set so I wouldn't feel like I really haven't played or don't have the feel of playing points," she explained.

Seeking her third title of the season, Davenport improved her 2004 record on clay to 7-0. She never has reached the final at one of the three Tier I claycourt events -- Charleston, Berlin and Rome.

The other seeds to advance to the third round were No. 6 Elena Dementieva of Russia, eighth-seeded Russian Nadia Petrova, No. 13 Anna Smashnova-Pistolesi of Israel and No. 16 Conchita Martinez of Spain.