Davydenko downs Chardy to move into Hamburg quarters

Hamburg: Russian second seed Nikolay Davydenko ended Frenchman Jeremy Chardy`s six-match winning streak on Thursday with a 6-3, 6-3 victory to advance to the German Open quarter-finals.Chardy, who had won his maiden tour title in Stuttgart last week, was broken once in the first set before conceding another break at 2-2 in the second.

Davydenko then held serve to love and led 4-2 before breaking one more time to seal his win and set up a quarter-final clash with Romanian Victor Hanescu. Hanescu came from a set down to defeat Frenchman Julien Benneteau 3-6, 6-3, 6-3. Rain interrupted play on all clay courts for several hours, except centre court which has a retractable roof where Uruguayan qualifier Pablo Cuevas swept past German eighth seed Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-4, 7-6 to move into the last eight. Cuevas broke his opponent at 4-4 in the first set when Kohlschreiber missed an easy dropshot and held serve to win. Kohlschreiber, ranked 24th, squandered a set point at 5-4 in the second with Cuevas firing an ace to level. The German saved three match points in the tie-break but failed to win the set on his second set point with 23-year-old Cuevas sealing his win on the fourth attempt when Kohlschreiber`s forehand sailed wide. He next meets Nicolas Almagro, after the Spaniard extracted revenge on Swede Robin Soderling, who had beaten him both at Wimbledon and en route to clinching the Swedish Open title last week, downing the third seed 7-5, 6-3. Soderling, this year`s French Open runner-up, was broken once in the first set with the Spaniard sending his crosscourt forehands short and wide to stretch the tall Swede. World number 40 Almagro, 23, continued to chase Soderling with punishing groundstrokes, breaking him twice in the second set to to win. Paul-Henri Mathieu, seeded 13th, struggled to beat German wild card entrant Daniel Brands, ranked 120th, who had knocked out top seed Gilles Simon in the previous round, also needing a break in each set to win 7-5, 7-5. Bureau Report