Sweden's Peter Hanson felt the support of the crowd helped him as he produced a flawless 66 to move into contention on day three of the British Masters supported by Sky Sports.
Hanson, who won the most recent of his six European Tour titles four years ago, will head into the final day at The Grove in a tie for third after carding five birdies and no bogeys on Saturday.
And Hanson, who was playing his third round alongside home favourite Lee Westwood and Bernd Wiesberger, believes the crowd had a positive impact on his performance.
He said: "Walking down here today all day we had great support. It just makes you a little bit sharper, and like we talked about yesterday, I putted better today.
It's just a different feel than when you're out there playing yourself and you don't have that many people behind you, you're maybe not as sharp - Peter Hanson
"I didn't hit it as nice but made a couple of good putts coming down the stretch, a couple of birdie putts and a couple of par saves. It was overall a very good day.
"That first tee was full of people. It's just a different feel than when you're out there playing yourself and you don't have that many people behind you, you're maybe not as sharp.
"So it kind of gets the better out of you when you have more people around.
"Like I said, playing with Lee helped. Obviously they are out here to cheer for him and so on, but it kind of feeds over to me as well."
Starting the day four shots off the halfway lead, Hanson began his third round in style, making back-to-back gains at the first and second holes to get to nine under.
He reached the turn in 32 after notching another birdie at the ninth.
After picking up another shot at the 12th, Hanson rolled in his birdie putt from 20 feet at the 15th before closing his round with three pars to finish four shots behind leader Alex Noren.
Hanson sits level with Bernd Wiesberger, Richard Sterne and Tommy Fleetwood on 12 under, one stroke behind Richard Bland in second.
Looking ahead to Sunday's final round, Hanson added: "I hope to be able to stay as calm as I did today and just keep focusing on my game.
"Obviously it helps if you're up there week-in and week-out - I think it helps you to perform and maybe pull off a win.
"I'm just going to try to work with myself tomorrow and try to focus on the right things, and then we'll see what happens."
