GOLF: CADDIE'S ROLE:If you see me getting the odd week off, then put the kitchen sink on my man Edoardo

I HAVE BEEN home for a couple of weeks and enjoyed the time to catch up with friends and fellow golfers who I would not normally have the time to meet on my more regular, shorter visits.

Apart from the lingering sympathy for Rory McIlroy’s final-round collapse at Augusta earlier last month, I was frequently asked who is going to win certain events. I suppose if I knew that or had any inclination about these things I wouldn’t have to continue carrying a golf bag for a living, nor contribute to these pages. I could become a golf tournament speculator, win loads of money and live happily ever after with a less stressed spine from carrying a heavy bag around the world.

Perhaps I could have considered such a sideline if I hadn’t received an email at the end of last year from our European Tour Caddies Association advising its members that any gambling on tour events is prohibited and anyone caught “at the bookies” would be severely reprimanded.

In other words, you would have to find another job. Gambling on golf on the tour is rightly forbidden.

There seems to be two main ways to look at and predict the outcomes of all golf events. Firstly, you can wisely look to the past and see what kind of history a player has at a certain course. There is no doubt that the old adage of horses for courses is a steady rule of thumb for golfers.

My player Edoardo Molinari always advises me after his first practice round at a new venue if the course “fits his eye”. It is a huge advantage if it does. Despite the homogenised state of course set-up in modern golf, the player’s ability to see shots on a certain course is vital.

Martin Kaymer, the world number two, is a classic example of this theory. As a preferably left-to-right shaper of the ball he has obviously struggled to see a realistic flight path around Augusta National, which favours a right-to-left shape. He has failed to make the cut in four visits there.

Edoardo took note when this year’s schedule was released and the Scottish Open, which he won convincingly last year at Loch Lomond, had been moved to a new venue in the relative isolation of the northerly Inverness. He loves Loch Lomond golf course. Not just because he won there but because it fits his aesthetic golfing eye.

You may well suggest that great golfers in their prime can win anywhere. There have been exceptions, of course. The most recent example would probably be how the then 59-year-old Tom Watson could ever have been is a position to lose in a play-off at the British Open Championship in Turnberry two years ago.

No matter how good the legendary Watson was in his day, surely his performance against the best younger, fitter, steadier golfers of the age on a long, tough links was against the general betting. Strange things can happen in sport, as in life, that catch the bookies unawares.

The whole business of predictions, of course, is very much that: a big business. Newspapers and television programmes would be less robust if it were not for the reams of print and hours of waffle that pre-empts a sporting event.

The second way, then, to influence your winning proclamations, depending on your inclination, is to listen to the technical experts to guide you to your winning bet.

Finally, you can use the wacky, seat-of-the-pants judgment, such as a seasoned caddie like me would adopt. It is a principal of the golfing gods. I’ll give you a very up-to-date example. I got a call from a friend who caddies for KJ Choi. He told me he wasn’t going to caddie for him in New Orleans last week because it was not part of the Korean’s original schedule and he had planned a holiday with his family that week.

My immediate response to my friend, after wishing him an enjoyable break, was, jokingly, get a bet on KJ.

The caddie-shack adage of anytime a caddie takes a break from his regular player or if an established team just part company, the player is imminently very likely to have a successful week, rings true. In keeping with the caddie-shack theory, KJ finished two shots behind the winner Bubba Watson in third place.

I wish I could have paid more attention to my own esoteric theory on picking winners and put a bundle on KJ.

I said it to plenty of my golfing friends last week that I fancied KJ to take the New Orleans Classic for that reason. They looked at me like I was some sort of tea-leaf reader who figured that we were going to enjoy an unseasonably mild and settled month of weather in April because a tern dived for fish at a strange angle as he was examining the dregs of his mug of tea one Sunday late in January on Slieve League.

It seems that our amateur meteorologist in Donegal, Michael Gallagher, is as equally successful in his weather predictions as the army of well qualified experts in the weather centre at Glasnevin.

So if you are privy to the details of regular player caddie relationships, and you get wind of an odd week off on the horizon, you would probably be closer to laying a good bet on a tournament than if you were to go by the more traditional channels of past and current form from the experts.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to limit the risk of error on the course with my player by going through our detailed pre-tournament preparation. If he expresses a grá for the course I will be inspired to make a little extra effort in search of victory.

Perhaps I should suggest that he gives me the week off in order to stress test the theory.

Picking a winner in golf is about as predictable as an Irish weather forecast. If we use the guidance of the unwritten rules of the golfing gods to back winners, it might be hard to prove that this is some sort of reliable insider tipping, but it does happen with remarkable repetition.