I arrived in Moline near Chicago on Friday after a long drive from Detroit and had a lazy weekend. I was at the course early on Monday morning, I played nine holes, the weather was warm and humid, and there were loads of midgeys everywhere, they were very annoying until a greenkeeper told us to use vanilla extract... a trip to Walmart that afternoon did the trick and we didnt get bothered again all week! They have a tradition at the John Deere Classic of using models of their products as tee markers which is pretty cool, a tractor is more interesting than a chunk of wood.

I Played early again on Tuesday, the course was nice and it looked like scoring would be good, for some reason the greens were really sticky and the ball wouldnt roll out, I spent some time putting on Tuesday afternoon hoping to get the pace of the greens. I got a new 3 and 4 iron this week from a Japanese company called Fourteen, their tour rep Rusty worked with me on Monday and got them made to my specification, as I liked them so much they went straight into my bag for the tournament.

Most tournaments have lots of cars on show but with John Deere being the tournament sponsor this week being an agricultural machinery company there were tractors and diggers everywhere. I'm sure some of the big harvesters they had around the course could give a ferrari a run for its price tag.

I played with Bob Sowards and Jimmy Walker this week, both were really good guys. I started well on Thursday, and was 2 under after ten holes, but I made four poor bogeys coming in for a bad 73. Friday was an early start and nothing much happened on the front nine, I was 1 over at the turn, I knew I had to make something to happen to have a chance at making the cut. I had a 270 yard 2nd shot at the par 5 tenth with water around the green, I decided to go for it and ended up making an eagle which kick started my round. I followed this with birdies at 14, 17 and 18 which put me right around the cut, but dissapointingly ended up missing by one stroke.

I am really happy with how I'm playing, again I drove the ball really well. In the end struggling with the pace of the greens hurt me this week, I hit lots of good putts but kept coming up short. My game is in good shape and all I can do is hope all parts of my game click together, I am so close to a big week...I hope!!!

I drove to Milwaukee with my caddy Kev on Sunday for my next event, I am looking forward to playing but will be a little sad not to be playing at the Open at Birkdale.