Well long story short, I will not be playing in this year's British Open.  Call it heartbreak, call it meltdown, I am definitely a bit beaten down after this journey that ended far too quickly.  36 holes in one day is ALOT of golf.  I teed off on Tuesday morning at 8:20am under eerily calm conditions.  The winds subsided for all of my morning round and allowed plenty of good scores to be registered by the field for the opening half of the day.  I struggled to a one over par 69, but still left myself in position with a good afternoon round to make my move.  After the morning 18, three under par was the number to get in.  Just as I rolled in my putt on 18, a huge line of thunderstorms coming from the southeast in France rolled in and led to a 4 hour delay between my first and second rounds.
    As I sat in the clubhouse with my caddie, Ben Scott, we listened to all the locals who had come out to watch talk among themselves about how Rye Golf Club was going to show it's teeth for the second round once the storms subsided.  I teed off my second round at 5:15 pm and knew that conditions would be windy throughout and that a well played round would put me in reach of a spot in the British Open.  On my opening nine holes, I began to confidently plot my way around the windswept links with perfect precision.  The pictures above indicate how firm the course really was.  Well thought out shots that followed the terrain would be rewarded.  I birdied my ninth hole of the day and turned in a 31 strokes.  I was back in the tournament and I was nine holes away from the promised land.  I just needed to keep the momentum going and play the back nine in one under par and I would have been in a playoff.  As I walked from nine green to ten tee box something caught my eye.  On a table in the clubhouse rested the British Open trophy itself, the Claret Jug.  For some reason, after seeing this trophy I got ahead of myself and began envisioning hoisting the trophy.   
    That turned out to be a curse in disguise, as right from the onset of my back nine I began losing control of my driver.  Left tee shot after left tee shot left me scrambling on Rye Golf Club from the tall heather grass that guarded the firm, brown baked fairways.  The one under par I needed was a distant dream as I finished my round at 9:20pm at night and the reality soon set in that nine holes of poor driving at the wrong time left me on the wrong side of the leaderboard.  I was so close to reaching my goal, but knowing how close I was with the right attitude can help me immensely for the remainder of the summer.  With no rest for the weary, I am teeing off today in Milan, Illinois for the John Deere Classic pre qualifier.  Yesterday was a long journey back home to the USA, but I feel well rested after a nice night's sleep and am ready to get after it today.  The game of golf just begs you to sit back on your loins and dwell on the past when things don't go your way.  I am not going to allow myself to go down that road.  Forward I go, and I know great things are well within grasp here on the foreseeable horizon.  Thanks for reading.  I can only be held down for so long.