The Canadian won her first match of the season against the Russian in straight sets.
Leylah Fernandez began her season at the Adelaide beating Ekaterina Alexandrova in straight sets 6-3, 6-4 in one hour and 17 minutes on court number one firing four aces and winning 86% of her first-serve points.
She is fresh off winning the Canadian Press female athlete of the year and she got off to a great start playing her usual aggressive game style with her powerful groundstrokes.
It stayed on serve until 2-1 when the Montreal native overpowered her Russian opponent and broke her to love to take an early 3-1 lead with that one break of serve being enough for her to serve out the first set.
The world number 24 continued to have the momentum and broke early once again in the second set to take a 2-1 lead and again was just too much for her opponent who was only separated by 10 spots in the WTA rankings.
One break sufficed for the US Open finalist and she served out the match in style to book herself a second-round encounter with either Iga Swiatek or Daria Saville.
Other matches
In the other matches of the day the Aussie Alja Tomlijanovic beat the Brit Heather Watson in straight sets 6-4, 7-6 (5), Kaja Juvan of Slovenia beat Chloe Paquet of France also in straight sets 6-4, 6-2.
Elena Rybakina the number seven seed beat another Aussie Storm Sanders but needed three sets to avoid the upset 6-4, 1-6, 6-1 in a match that lasted two hours on court.
Despina Papamichail of Greece beat the Swiss Stefanie Voegele 6-4, 7-6 in a match that almost went three hours, Marie Bouzkova had no issues beating the Russian Anna Blinkova 6-4, 6-2.
The Italian Lucia Bronzetti came back from a set down to beat the Ukrainian Kateryna Bondarenko in three sets 1-6, 7-6, 6-4, and another Aussie Maddison Inglis beat a Spaniard Irene Burillo Escorihuela in straight sets 6-1, 6-4.
