Stonehaven teenager Sam Locke can look forward to the greatest weekend of his life as he spends two days strolling around the Carnoustie links with men he dreams of joining as a professional golfer, knowing he has already done enough to secure one of his sport’s most coveted prizes.

On qualifying for The Open, the Scottish Amateur champion joined three rivals in a contest for the silver medal, but as the second day got underway it had become a head-to-head, South African Jovan Rebula, the Amateur champion, having run up an eight-over-par 79 in the opening round, while China’s Asia-Pacific Amateur champion Yuxin Lin shot an 80 on Thursday, leaving both too much to do.

Denmark’s Nicola Hojgaard, the European Amateur champion, had matched Locke’s opening round 72, but his challenge began to fall away on yesterday’s front nine with a run of three bogeys in four holes and although he recovered from bogeying the short 13th by birdieing the par five 14th, he finally succumbed to Carnoustie’s closing stretch, dropping shots at the 16th and 18th holes.

That, though, was only part of the 19-year-old’s task and, having been first off on the second day, he knew he faced a long anxious wait after his attempt to save par from 25 feet on the last green lipped out, leaving him on the cut line at three-over-par for the championship.

“Hopefully the rain pours down and the wind blows hard, but we’ll see,” he laughed, after enduring the worst of the day’s conditions. “I can’t change it now. I’m in at three-over. If it’s good enough, it’s good enough. I’ve had a good week anyway and hopefully I’m here for another two days.”

That score was, indeed, good enough and Locke most certainly proved himself good enough with the way he recovered from his own difficulties early in his round as a run of three successive birdies from the 13th proved the difference since he, too, failed to make par at the 16th as well as the last and, as a protégé of 1999 Carnoustie Open champion Paul Lawrie, he was particularly pleased with the battling qualities which saw him emerge as the only Scot as well as the only amateur to make the cut.

“I just thought keep plugging away,” was his reaction to following a bogey at the second with a double bogey at the next. “You never know what’s round the corner in this game, especially kind of I’ve been putting and chipping quite good the last two days. So I felt, if I could keep it in play on the tee, at least give myself chances for birdies. A few of them are going to go in, and thankfully they did. I felt I had to dig quite deep to get some of it back. I didn’t really hit it good at all off the tee, so, it was quite a tall ask, so I was pretty pleased with myself to be honest.”

After a nervous day, as it looked for a long time like he might miss out by a single stroke before the cut line shifted in the right direction late in the afternoon, his reward is now the most relaxing weekend of angst free golf any youngster at his stage of his career could ever hope to enjoy.