Victor Perez and Matthias Schwab fired closing rounds of 66 to finish in the top five at the WGC-HSBC Champions on their World Golf Championships debuts.
The duo made it into the limited field event by virtue of their place in the top 30 of the Race to Dubai Rankings Presented by Rolex and showed that they truly belonged at Sheshan International Golf Club.
Playing together alongside another debutant in Christiaan Bezuidenhout on Sunday, both players were challenging midway through the final round before eventually finishing four shots out of a play-off won by Rory McIlroy.
And Alfred Dunhill Links Championship winner Perez believes the World Number Two is the yardstick by which he should be judging his own progress.
"I feel like he's a setting stone for us, the way he approaches the game," he said. "I'm very pleased with what I did and it just makes you want to work even harder.
"It's a very good week. I think it's not just me. Obviously I'm finishing fourth but it's everybody around me and all the people that have helped me along the way that have allowed me to pull a very good performance like this on Sunday."
Schwab has yet to break his European Tour duck but is trending in the right direction and enjoyed the chance to test himself in Shanghai.
"I was the last one in off the Race to Dubai Rankings so that was a nice bonus for me," he said. "I was just genuinely happy to be here and have a chance to play against the best players in the world for the first time in my career.
"I embrace that and I'm happy that I played quite okay for four days. I'm happy with the result."
