Third round action takes place Thursday at the International German Open with top seed and defending champion Nikolay Davydenko, No. 3 Jurgen Melzer and No. 6 Juan Carlos Ferrero leading the way. First on Centre Court is Ferrero against Jarkko Nieminen. Ferrero had his best result here in 2001, making it to the final before falling to Albert Portas in five sets. The Spaniard hasn’t been past the third round here in any of his other five attempts and will now try to break that pattern as he faces Nieminen. Ferrero is 3-1 against the Finnish native, but Nieminen has only lost to Top 20 players in Hamburg (8-0 against non-Top 20 players here and Ferrero is ranked No. 21).

Second on Centre is Florian Mayer against Maximo Gonzalez, a first-time ATP World Tour meeting. But Mayer has taken out a seed this week, No. 15 seed Alexandr Dolgopolov, and did win their only prior Challenger meeting. Also, Mayer will have his German home crowd supporting him.

Third on Centre is No. 7 seed Thomaz Bellucci against No. 10 seed and top German Philipp Kohlschreiber, who won both of the pair’s previous meetings this year.

Fourth on Centre is a first-time meeting between two unseeded players who pulled off upsets in the second round: Denis Istomin and Julian Reister. Uzbekistan’s Istomin stunned No. 5 seed Nicolas Almagro while German wild card Reister upset No. 12 seed Victor Hanescu. Both are playing the main draw here for the first time and one will be in their first quarter-final here.

The fifth and final match on Centre is Davydenko against Andrey Golubev. Davydenko won their only previous meeting, on clay last year, and has also won his last six matches here, five to win the title last year and one more in his opener this year. The only seed in action on the outer courts is No. 3 Melzer against Frenchman Jeremy Chardy.