Robert MacIntyre finished with two birdies to fire a 66 and join Richard Bland and Calum Hill at the top of the leaderboard after day two of the 2021 Betfred British Masters hosted by Danny Willett.
England's Bland had carded a 69 to stay bogey free for the week and sat atop the leaderboard at seven under for most of the day before the Scottish pair made their moves in the afternoon at The Belfry.
MacIntyre started his round with five birdies but then fell back as Hill produced a composed performance to leapfrog Bland into top spot.
But MacIntyre's big finish in a 66 had him alongside Bland before Hill bogeyed the last in a 70.
Frenchman Julien Guerrier, South African Justin Harding and England's Eddie Pepperell were then at six under, a shot clear of another Frenchman in Matthieu Pavon.
World Number 45 MacIntyre is one of golf's fastest rising stars, having won the 2019 Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year Award and claimed his maiden European Tour title the following season at the Aphrodite Hills Cyrus Showdown.
After finishing third at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, pipping World Number One Dustin Johnson to the last 16 of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and finishing 12th at the Masters Tournament on the 2021 Race to Dubai, he had all eyes on him this week and has not disappointed.
“I was in free flow,” MacIntyre said of his flying start. “I hit a couple close but the putter was working. For me it felt beautiful.
“That could have been a crazy score. I still missed quite a few chances but that’s golf. If I can shoot 66-66 at the weekend playing like that you would take that.
"It's just good to see the work that we're putting in on the putting continuing to perform. I started working with Graeme (Leslie) in the middle of last year and I was getting into bad habits, he just keeps drilling it into me: 'just trust what you're doing'. Everything that we've done is pretty simple, he just gives me basic things to work on and I trust it."
Hill graduated from the European Challenge Tour the season after his countryman in 2019 after claiming three wins in the space of a year and has three top tens from eight starts in 2021 as he looks for a first European Tour victory.
"It was alright, not too bad," he said. "I think the weather was more favourable than it could’ve been, so not too bad.
"It’s been great. I’ve had a couple of chip-ins from the first two rounds already. I keep knocking it close and not putting too much stress on my putter when I need to get up and down, so it’s been really good.
"I didn’t quite have the long game dialled in today, so I had a few lag putts that I had to get up and not too many close that were very close, but all in all it wasn’t too bad. I’m striving for a very good weekend and finish on top but we’ll see what we can do."
Bland is also looking for his first victory in his 478th appearance and, with one eye already on the senior circuit, the 48-year-old admits a win this week would mean "everything".
He put a tee shot to four feet at the seventh to turn in 35 and was a picture of consistency as he holed from inside 12 feet after laying up at the driveable par four tenth and made a 27 footer at the 13th to set the target from the morning wave.
Hill made a two putt birdie on the third and chipped in at the fourth to join the lead but tree trouble at the eighth meant he was one back at the turn.
He too decided to lay up at the tenth and put his second to ten feet for a birdie before holing a 12 footer on the next to hit the front on his own.
MacIntyre had been steady in carding a 71 on day one but he flew out of the blocks on day two as he started his round with five birdies.
He put an approach to four feet on the first and then holed from around 20 feet on the second, fourth and fifth, while also making an up-and-down on the par five third.
Water off the tee on the next saw him surrender a bogey and he also dropped a shot on the 12th but he hit back with a tee shot to five feet at the 14th.
A two putt birdie on the 17th moved him back to six under and when he holed a 17 footer on the last, he was alongside Bland.
Hill then three putted the last and we had a three way tie at the top.
Harding had led at eight under before making a triple bogey on the sixth in a 69, while Guerrier matched the lowest round of the week with a 66 and Pepperell carded a 68.
Pavon's 71 left him at five under, a shot ahead of home favourites Dave Coupland, Richard Mansell, Lee Slattery, Jordan Smith and Andy Sullivan, South African Louis de Jager, Italy's Guido Migliozzi and Austrian Bernd Wiesberger.
