It's only halfway but Alex Salmond may just be getting fidgety.

The First Minister roared himself blue in the royal box when Andy Murray won Wimbledon and barged his way joyously to the front of the queue to greet Scottish Open winner Phil Mickelson last weekend. Given his well-publicised stance against male-only Muirfield, what would Eck do if Martin Laird won the Open? Gatecrash the prize giving with a saltire in one hand and a suffragette carried under his oxster perhaps?

There is plenty of golf to be played in this intriguing championship, of course, but Laird is a man on a major mission. On another beautifully warm East Lothian day, the 30-year-old kept his Claret Jug crusade firmly on track over this firmest of tracks. A liberal spraying of water to the parched greens had altered the pace of the putting surfaces for the early starters – "on the second I had a 20-footer and left it about five-feet short so there was a noticeable difference" – but Laird got to grips with the terrain and cemented his place in the upper echelons.

A level-par 71, for a one-under aggregate of 141, left the Glasgow man handily positioned for a weekend assault and, having missed the cut in three of his last four Open appearances, it is an opportunity he is eager to make the most of. Laird certainly feels that he has plenty more in his locker. "Overall I didn't play that well," admitted the Scot after keeping the home fires well and truly burning by finishing in a share of sixth. "So shooting even-par when I'm not at my best shows that my game is in a good spot, because I really didn't hit a good shot until the seventh or eighth hole."

At that stage of the day, coming towards the turn, Laird was two-over but roared back into the red with a telling thrust that spawned birdies at nine, 10, 11 and 12 and had him sharing third. Muirfield's rigorous closing stretch threatened to derail the Laird express but he holed a six-footer to salvage a bogey six on the 17th when the damage could have been far worse before trundling in a 15-footer on the last to bound off the green with a spring in his step.

Laird is now looking to keep the momentum going. The triple PGA Tour champion is also hoping the support builds on the sidelines too. "I think it will help me more than hurt me," he said. "I probably have higher expectations for myself than everybody in the crowd. You have to look at it as something that can help you. Even when I was struggling today, you hear people shouting 'come on'. They can pull you along."

Stephen Gallacher certainly gave the local galleries a lift as the 38-year-old, who lives just 40 minutes away, survived the cut in his own backyard after a one-under 70 left him on a four-over 146.

A card featuring 16 pars was almost reminiscent of the 18 regulation numbers Nick Faldo jotted down en route to his Muirfield Open victory of 1987 but Gallacher got away from that plodding consistency with one eventful diversion. On the ninth, the two-time European Tour winner got a flier out of the rough and watched his ball clatter off the dyke that runs the length of the hole before bouncing back on to the green. "I then holed a 30-footer for eagle so the key there is to just keep it below the height of the wall," joked Gallacher, as he mulled over his moment of good fortune.

With the wind direction changing from west to east, the baked, bouncing links posed a different challenge. "On 15 during the first round I hit a driver and a 5-iron," noted Gallacher. "Today it was a 5-iron and a wedge. I just can't believe the difference in the course. I think the greens went from 15 on the stimp to about nine overnight. That's the course at its best."

It seemed that Laird and Gallacher would be the only Scots from an original battalion of 10 to make the weekend but Open venues can do funny things. As the numbers soared the cut mark went up and up. Sandy Lyle, the Open champion in 1985, birdied the 18th in a fine 72 and thought he would be departing on six-over but ended up making it comfortably. Paul Lawrie, on the back foot after a crippling 81 in the opening round, conjured a superb 69 for an eight-over 150 but was resigned to his fate. He was back in Aberdeen when the qualifying mark was confirmed at eight-over and turned around. That rise also brought Richie Ramsay back from the brink but five other Scots, George Murray, Marc Warren, Scott Jamieson, Lloyd Saltman and amateur Grant Forrest all exited.