Florian Mayer delighted the home crowd here at the Gerry Weber Stadium with a 6-4 6-4 victory over second seeded Nikolay Davydenko in today's second round feature match that lasted only 70 minutes.

Davydenko's wretched form on grass continues with a dismal career record of 2-12 on his least favourite surface.

Mayer achieved the first break point opportunity in the third game, rifling a forehand return down the line for a clean winner to the delight of the German audience.

Davydenko then lost his serve in the next point going long on his two-handed backhand.

The single break was all the German needed to wrap up the first set in just 30 minutes and then immediately broke the world no.3 at the start of the second when the Russian sliced a deep ball on the backhand wing into the net.

Davydenko broke back immediately on his fourth break point when Mayer's forehand went long off a good length return from the Russian.

Mayer broke again in the fifth game, taking full advantage of the Russian's inability to stay in most of the longer rallies without making an error.

That proved to be the vital break, and Mayer closed out the match on serve to book his quarterfinal spot against the eighth seeded Marcos Baghdatis. 

Davydenko, who had won their only previous encounter in the final of Sopot last year, felt that the grass had given the German a huge advantage.

"His game is always like this; on clay I have more chance, I can do what I want", he said. "Here he is hitting a few balls and then I make mistakes because I have no chance to hit back. He didn't make winners, just hitting fast and very low. I cannot get control to hit the ball back."

Despite slipping several times, the Russian did not want to condemn the court.

"Grass court is always dangerous everywhere, I don't play so much on grass so I don't want to say it's so dangerous. Everyone is fighting here and anybody can get injured, it's all about luck - good or bad."

When asked what his expectations were for the tournament following Roger Federer's withdrawal, Davydenko was unequivocal.

"Nothing", he said emphatically. "My coach tell me to just treat the grass court season like a holiday because if I try to think about great results for me it is crazy in the head. For me now it's important to just enjoy and finish the grass season and then 4 weeks of clay, and then hard courts."

Earlier today, Jarkko Nieminen ended the fine run of lucky loser Andrei Pavel in 3 sets.

Andre Jones
Gerry Weber Stadium
Halle

Listen to press conerence with Nikolay Davydenko which had place after this match.