Felipe Aguilar and Alex Noren held a share of the lead early in round three of the Volvo China Open, but they were looking over their shoulders at Benjamin Hebert who was making a surge up the leaderboard in Beijing.
The Frenchman saw a run of 15 consecutive made cuts broken last week at the Shenzhen International but has bounced back in brilliant style at Topwin Golf and Country Club.
He began day three right on the cut line but made three birdies in his last seven holes upon the resumption of the weather-delayed second round and carried that momentum through into round three.
Starting in the bottom half of the U-draw, he eagled the short par four 11th and then made birdies on the 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th to get to six under for the day through eight holes.
That got him to 11 under for the week, a single shot behind Aguilar and Noren who were playing together in the final group.
In contrast to Hebert, Chilean Aguilar had missed six cuts in a row before making the weekend at Genzon Golf Club, and he birdied the first to get to 12 under after three holes.
Swede Noren has missed just one cut in his last 21 and he had gains on the first and the third to join Aguilar at the top of the pile.
Dane Lucas Bjerregaard was alongside Hebert at 11 under after holing his approach at the par four third for an eagle, a shot clear of Hennie Otto, Marcel Siem and Bernd Wiesberger.
Siem had a birdie on the second to sit ten under after four holes, with Otto and Wiesberger both level par for the day.
Grégory Bourdy, Jorge Campillo, Grégory Havret, Tyrrell Hatton and Tae-hoon Kim were then all at nine under, a shot clear of a group of ten players at eight under as more low scoring was possible in the low winds.
