Graeme McDowell has endured a difficult start to the season but yesterday's news that he hasn't secured an invite to this week's Bay Hill Invitational - the event he finished runner-up in 12 months ago - because of an application oversight ensures his current run in the US goes from bad to worse

"Basically we left the application for an invite too late," explained McDowell. "To be honest myself and my management team (ISM) didn't realise that I was wasn't automatically in the event. You could say we've overshot the line at this stage."

The 26-year-old's plight is made all the more difficult as he is still trying to race into a place at next month's US Masters. Having slipped out of the top 50 and down to 69th in the world rankings McDowell is not in line to get an invite to the first major of the year at Augusta. And because he has missed four cuts in as many starts on the US circuit this year, and lost to Vijay Singh in the first round of the Accenture World match play championship, he opted out of last week's Honda Classic to spend time working on his swing.

"Things haven't been great for me recently," added the Ryder Cup hopeful. "But I managed to get some really good work done on my swing last week and I feel like I've turned the corner from that point of view. We worked on couple of swing issues and I'm starting to feel really good about my game again . . . I'm disappointed that as we stand I won't get a chance to go out there and test it this week. The only hope is I get the late call."

Should McDowell fail to get into the this week's event his last chance to secure a place at the Masters will be next week's Players' Championship.