SINGAPORE, 1 July 2005 — Chinese world No. 1 Lin Dan avenged his shock Athens Olympic loss to Singapore’s Ronald Susilo with a straight sets win in the third-round of the $170,000 Singapore Open yesterday.

Lin eased past Susilo, who has struggled for fitness since taking six months off after the Olympics, 15-6, 15-7 to cruise into the quarterfinals.

“I took this match very seriously. I know what Susilo can do and even though he was not in peak fitness, it was a good match,” said a generous Lin, speaking through an interpreter.

Yesterday’s other third-round matches featured only two surprises, with Malaysia’s seeded pair of Mohammad Hafiz bin Hashim and Lee Chong Wei bowing out. Ng Wei of Hong Kong ousted Mohammad, the sixth seed, 15-12, 8-15, 15-12 to earn a quarterfinal spot against Lin, and fourth-seeded Lee lost 13-15, 15-6, 4-15 to South Korea’s Lee Hyung-il.

There were no such problems for the Danes, with second seed Kenneth Jonassen fighting past Chen Yu of China 15-5, 17-14 and third seed Peter Gade crushing Chetan Anand of India 15-4, 15-3.

Gade will play reigning Olympic champion and eighth seed Taufik Hidayat of Indonesia, who made a slow start but still was too good for Sairul Amar Ayob of Malaysia, winning 17-14, 15-4. Jonassen has a tougher quarterfinal opponent in Chen Hong, the current All England champion from China. Chen ousted Agus Hariyanto of Hong Kong 15-9, 15-11 in just over an hour.

In the women’s draw, China’s world No. 1 Xie Xingfang recovered from a disastrous start to quell the challenge of Japanese qualifier Yu Hirayama 6-11, 11-2, 11-2 and earn a quarterfinal berth.

Xie’s second seeded compatriot Zhang Ning, the Athens gold medalist and defending champion here, also had to draw on her reserves to get past the local challenge of Xing Aiying 11-3, 2-11, 11-2. Xie next faces eighth-seeded Chinese compatriot Zhou Mi, who beat Li Li of Singapore 11-1, 11-13, 11-4.

Zhang will play Hong Kong’s Wang Chen, the fifth seed who made short work of Japan’s Kaori Mori 11-2, 11-4. After toppling fourth seed Yao Jie of the Netherlands in the first round on Wednesday, Chinese qualifier Jiang Yan Jiao continued her great run to beat Japan’s Kanako Yonekura 11-4, 13-10 yesterday.

Jiang’s quarterfinal opponent will be Bulgarian Petya Nedeltcheva, another unseeded player in hot form. Nedeltcheva, who upset seventh seed Tracy Hallam of England on Wednesday, brushed aside South Korea’s Hwang Hye-Youn 11-6, 11-3.