Lleyton Hewitt has continued his impressive run at the Hamburg Masters by defeating third seed Nikolai Davydenko in the third round.

The resurgent Australian won 6-4 2-6 6-4 to claim his biggest scalp since Rafael Nadal retired against him at one-set all at Queens 11 months ago.

Hewitt is on course to meet the Spanish world No.2 again in the semi-finals of the clay-court tournament.

First, though, he will have to overcome the unseeded Nicolas Almagro in the quarter-finals with the young Spaniard ending Tommy Robredo's title defence in the second round before downing Jose Acasuso in the third.

Hewitt's three-set triumph continued his dominance over world No.3 Davydenko, with the Australian now holding a 4-0 record over the Russian.

Nadal and top seed Roger Federer also won through to the quarters.

Nadal settled an old score against Igor Andreev while Federer was back to his best in beating Juan Carlos Ferrero.

Nadal's 6-4 6-1 victory over the Russian Andreev took his winning streak on clay to 79 matches, dating back to a quarter-final defeat by Andreev in the Valencia Open in April 2005.

Federer followed him out on court and needed just an hour to rack up a ruthless 6-2 6-3 win over Ferrero.

The world No.1, who has gone four tournaments without a title and split with coach Tony Roche at the weekend, needed just an hour to defeat the former French Open champion.

There were two more wins for Spaniards, giving them half the quarter-final slots in the 2.1 million euros ($A3.45 million) tournament.

Twelfth seed David Ferrer beat the seventh seeded Croatian Ivan Ljubicic 6-3 6-3 and Carlos Moya, another former French Open champion, recovered from a bad start to beat eighth seeded American James Blake 1-6 6-3 6-3.

Ferrer will play Federer, while Moya will take on the fourth seed Novak Djokovic of Serbia, who had to win twice to take his place in the quarter-finals.

Fifth seeded Chilean Fernando Gonzalez also saw double duty and his reward for the two wins will be to face Nadal in a repeat of last week's final in Rome, won by the Spaniard.

Nadal had not played Andreev on clay since the Valencia defeat. With the sun out and roof open, the Spaniard overcame a few early difficulties with Andreev's dynamite forehand to complete victory in 87 minutes.

"I'm very happy with my game," Nadal said.

"I played a serious match and I feel confident."

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