"Missing cuts is like forgetting your lines during your dramatic soliloquy on stage, every night you perform."

Thanks to Irish Golf Nut for another engaging Colin Byrne column, this time with the literate caddie writing about his year on the bag of struggling young golfer Tom Lewis.

Lewis, you may recall, contended at the 2011 Open Championship and a year ago won the Portugal Masters. It's been a battle since.

To live with huge expectation at the tender age of 21 is understandably stressful. This, of course, is coupled with your own expectation as an instantly proven winner. Where do you go after such a perfect start to a new career? Well, on hindsight the answer is down.

This is a new and dark space for a hopeful youngster to inhabit at a stage of life when the only concern should be having fun. I understand why those looking from the outside assume travelling the world in relative luxury to play the game you love (sometimes) and earn a good living to be a dream existence. It is a good life on tour, but to finely tuned performers, missing cuts is like forgetting your lines during your dramatic soliloquy on stage, every night you perform.

The last time Tom made a cut was at the start of June this year. We have had four months of floundering with only a couple of rounds under par and the rest way off the mark. This is hard to take for any new player, least of all an ambitious 21-year-old who won his third event as a professional.