Australian golfer Brendan Jones was left with an anxious wait on Friday to see if he’d made the British Open cut after failing to capitalise on a promising start to his second round.

Jones climbed to equal 14th, and to within four shots of the lead, with a birdie two on the opening par-three at Royal Lytham and St Annes.

“I just hitting a perfect shot into the first,” he said.

But four hours and six bogeys later, plus just one more birdie on the par-four 13th, and Jones was signing off for a four-over 74 and precariously placed in a tie for 91st.

The Japan-based world No.106 was at three over for the tournament after opening with a 69 on Thursday.

“If I do happen to miss the cut, I’ll be disappointed,” Jones said.

“I’ve felt like I’ve played well enough to be here all four days.

“But now, I’ve got to wait another 12 hours, I guess.”

Jones’s slide began on the second when he missed the fairway and was unable to make par.

It was the first of half a dozen dropped shots for the round.

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of wind out there but, this morning, it was quite cold and the wind was into totally the opposite direction and made the first couple of holes really, really long,” he said.

“It was just a lot of mental mistakes today too. I don’t think I hit the ball into a bunker yesterday. But if I did, it might have been one, and I felt like it in all 208 today.

“Then there were just a lot of unforced errors from there, hitting good shots on bad lines with this wind.

“I’m not playing poorly. It just seems that every time I get to play these majors, I just waste shots and the top players in the world don’t do that.

“I seem to do it a lot and that’s the difference and now I’ve got a long wait to see if three over is going to be good enough.”