The golfing gods can be a funny old crowd, sitting up there in the clouds and teasing and tormenting those mortals who batter away at this Royal & Ancient game.

Ahead of his second, and ultimately final round in the 79th Masters, Bradley Neil had made a plea to that crew up stairs. "If there is someone up there, please tell them to send down an under-par round, I beg you," wrote Neil on his social media page. Divine intervention wasn't forthcoming. He may have been better asking for help from the religious zealot who parks himself outside the grounds of August National and hollers and hoots his lungs dry all day long.

Many say this cherished piece of golfing land is like heaven, only harder to get in, and Neil has certainly savoured the opportunity to wander through these Pearly Gates even though the result was not what he wanted. A second round 79 left him with a 13-over 157 and the Masters dream was over. Finishing with a flourish and picking up a birdie on the last was a nice souvenir to take away. "I'll take a few t shirts home as well but it's the memories that will stay," said the 19-year-old. "I have a lot of them. Everything is now stored up here in my head."

Neil's only other birdie of the day arrived on the second and four three-putts on a tough outward half of 41 yesterday kept him on the back foot. "The last two days have felt like I have been been taking a step forward and then taking two back," added Neil, who is set to return to amateur duty in the Battle Trophy at Crail next weekend after his spell mingling with the world's finest. "I couldn't get one up on the course, it just kept coming back at me. It's the respect thing. You take a shot from it and you have to expect it will take something back. I couldn't gain enough momentum after making a birdie to get another. I would bogey the next and you just can't do that. I'm disappointed with the last two days. I've done worse here than I did at the Open (he also missed the cut) but some people work all their whole lives to try and get here but only get to watch it on TV. The best thing I can take away is that I made it here."

Neil, who is set to turn professional in the summer, is still aiming high and has his lofty ambitions. A glance at the leaderboard when he came off demonstrated the fearsome, eye-popping standards that continue to be set in the professional game. At 21, Jordan Spieth is just two years older than Neil but there he was, romping away at the front of the Masters field.

"When he was 16 he was making cuts on the PGA Tour; it's not a surprise what he's doing," said Neil. "This is where I want to be in a few years time. I need to give myself a right kick up the a*** after this."

Sandy Lyle, who was paired with Neil for the opening two rounds, saw his hopes of making the cut for a third successive year evaporate with a 76 which left the 1988 Masters champion on a six-over tally of 150.

Lyle turned back the clock by utilising a hickory putter this week but he couldn't quite roll back the years on the greens. "32 putts in round one and 33 in round two is not going to get the job done," lamented the 57-year-old Scot. "I was threatening at one stage to put the putter on the barbecue and I'm sure the hickory would have added a nice flavour to my steak. But I actually enjoyed the feeling of hitting the ball with the hickory as I had been struggling with the heavier, modern putters."

Before he departed, there were words for Neil too. "Bradley started to hit the ball well in the last few holes and he was saying to himself 'where has that been all week?'," said Lyle. "But it was simply because he had relaxed and he had taken away all the pressure he'd put on himself. He's just pushed too hard this week, I think. But he'll come away with valuable knowledge about that."

The Scottish representation was wiped out later in the day when Stephen Gallacher, who was flirting with the top 10 at this stage of the tournament last year, sagged to a scrappy 76 and missed the cut on a three-over 147. "It's one of those things here that if you are in position the course plays straight forward, but if you're out then it is horrendous," lamented Gallacher.

The golfing gods were not waving their saltires yesterday.