"I didn't think I had it in me."

Tim Rosaforte follows up with Erik Compton about his play Monday and about next week. What a contrast to the boneheads who no-showed for the qualifiers.

"Two years ago June 7, I was at my parents house with (wife) Barbara," Compton said. "We had no baby; we didn't know she was pregnant. I was all stapled up, trying to find a comfortable position to lay down in and get up and go to the bathroom. There were staples all down my leg, all down my chest. I was all beat up, man, but I was envisioning what was going on now. It was wild. I was watching the Open at Torrey thinking [about the Open at Pebble]."

What helped were the low expectations based on Compton's 82 on Sunday in the Memorial, and how worn out he felt waking up at 4 a.m. that Monday morning. Disconsolate, he walked off the course with a double bogey and hit balls on the Muirfield Village range until 9 p.m. Sunday night. Quietly he made his fourth cut of the year at the Memorial, but in every case physical fatigue was an issue on the weekend.

After opening with a 69, Compton's tour caddie, Ron "Bambi" Levin had to leave for a commitment with Todd Hamilton at the Memphis St. Jude Classic. Scott Wilke, a massage therapist who had been working on Compton at Muirfield Village, offered to take the bag. Wilke is a member at Springfield CC, and gave Compton a good read on a 50-footer he made for eagle on the 15th hole.