British number three Andy Murray moved to within one victory of qualifying for the US Open when he beat Italy's Paolo Lorenzi on Thursday.
The 18-year-old Scot came through 6-3 6-2 in New York against 23-year-old Lorenzi, ranked 263 in the world.
Murray broke five times in total on his way to a final qualifying match against Giovanni Lapentti of Ecuador.
In earlier second-round matches, fellow Britons Jonny Marray and Arvind Parmar both lost in straight sets.
Marray went down 6-4 6-2 to Brazil's Thiago Alves, while Parmar dropped the first four games against American Hugo Armando and eventually lost 6-3 6-4.
Murray broke Lorenzi's serve immediately and survived two break points in game four before easing to the opening set.
The Italian hit back with a break at the beginning of the second but Murray responded straight away, and then took the decisive break to go 4-2 up.
That finally broke Lorenzi's resistance and Murray broke again to wrap up victory.
He will now take on Lapentti, who fought back to defeat Russia's Igor Kunitsyn 3-6 6-3 6-3.
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MMIX
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A very tough match as Lapentti has won several challengers too and has made a lot of progress up the rankings this year
