NORTH Yorkshire's Simon Dyson was facing an uphill battle to survive the midway cut on his US Open debut.

Dyson carded a nine-over-par 79 at the Pinehurst course in North Carolina, where stifling heat added to the glass-fast conditions of the greens.

The 27-year-old York-based king of clubs opened with a par but then came dropped shots on the second and fourth holes before his round took a worse turn when he yielded shots on six, seven and eight.

His lone success in a round, where many of his British contemporaries fared almost as badly, was at Pinehurst's longest hole - the 607-yard par-five tenth which he birdied.

But the Malton and Norton GC star dropped a shot on the next and double-bogeyed the par-four 12th, which, added, to bogeys on 15 and 16, left him a mountainous task to make the sharp end of the event.

Updated: 10:47 Friday, June 17, 2005