DUBLIN, Ohio -- Sometimes you can be too competitive. Sometimes you can want it too badly. Sometimes, against your better judgment, you try to show how tough you are and parts of you aren’t ready to join you in the journey.

Chris DiMarco wants so badly to make the Ryder Cup team that he has, at least temporarily, jeopardized his ability to do just that. One of the standouts for the U.S. team in last year’s Presidents Cup matches and the man who clinched the winning point, DiMarco is slowly emerging from some serious self-inflicted wounds.

With rounds of 72-71 at Muirfield Village Golf Club, DiMarco made the cut at the Memorial Tournament, which is a bit of news -- and news probably to those who didn’t know it was news. Entering this week’s event DiMarco had missed 6 of 13 cuts, including five of his last eight.

The most cuts he ever missed in any of his 10 seasons on the PGA TOUR is seven.

It’s been a painful learning experience for the fiery University of Florida All-American, whose home-made swing and honed intensity have served him well. Painful literally. His ribs on the back left part of his torso are still sore, requiring stretching therapy several times a day.

“When it hurts the most is when I wake up in the morning,” DiMarco said Friday after his 1-under-71 in the suspended second round put him safely inside the projected cutline. “I’ve been sleeping on it and I feel it. It’s still tender even now, but it’s getting better. And I’m hitting it a ton better in the last two weeks.”

DiMarco, 37, would tell you he couldn’t hit it worse. The injury has prevented him from getting extension in his backswing and killed the momentum that began to build at the Presidents Cup and increased with his victory at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship on the European Tour. The pain from the injury has been causing him to lift the club and take it to the outside. Where his game suffered most from the swing fault is with the driver -- and it has shown. His 57 percent success rate in hitting fairways is a career low. Only one other season, in 1995, has he averaged less than 60 percent.

“I’m not the longest guy in the world, so I need to hit it straight, and I wasn’t doing that,” he said frankly.

He probably shouldn’t have been doing anything. He admits that he rushed back from the injury too soon because he wanted to play in the Masters, where he finished second in 2005 and had played in the final group each of the last two years.

“It was my own fault,” said DiMarco with a self-effacing honesty that you rarely find today in professional sports. “If the Masters hadn’t been coming up I would have taken three weeks off. But I wanted to go to Augusta and I didn’t want to play without playing Atlanta, and after Atlanta I realized that I wasn’t really ready for Augusta anyway.

“I certainly didn’t go into Augusta with any type of momentum at all. And it carried over. And then my driving just totally left me. I know it sounds like I wasn’t making a good choice because I was aggravating it all along, but I felt like I needed to find something.”

Chris DiMarco went 4-0-1 in the 2005 Presidents Cup. (Martin/WireImage)

He never could find it. So the three-time TOUR winner went back to the basics. He suspended his search for answers and ceased questioning himself. “The last two weeks I’ve finally decided to stop worrying about it and play golf. I’ve been just thinking about it too much,” said DiMarco, who tied for 22nd at last week’s FedEx St. Jude Classic.

Well, that’s because he’s been thinking too much about the Ryder Cup later this year in Ireland. His Presidents Cup performance, where he teamed successfully with Phil Mickelson and was an emotional fireplug for the U.S. squad all week, seemed to suggest he’d be a fixture for America for several more years in team showdowns. But thus far he is languishing in 17th place.

Though he’d gladly accept the invitation from captain Tom Lehman, he doesn’t want to be a wild card pick. “The Ryder Cup is what I’m thinking about every week,” DiMarco admitted. “That’s my main focus. I realize I can take care of that by playing well, but when you’re not playing like you want, you press a bit and things kind of snowball away from you. I’ve definitely learned from this.”

And being competitive as he is, DiMarco will apply that lesson to the rest of his season. Hunger to succeed can be a boon and a curse. Only those who truly feel it could understand that they’ll always go together, and that the curse isn’t far from a cure.