Caddying for many of us is instinctive: yardage, club to match the number and away you go. The only trouble with the intuitive part is when you have been used to doing a job that does not lend itself to instinct.

We can all get stuck in our old ways, are influenced by the jobs we did before caddying. Take Miles Byrne. Miles took a couple of years off the bag until he got the call from Ian Woosnam a few weeks back. He had caddied for Peter Baker for three years before his sabbatical. Miles found a good reason to stay at home and she was instrumental in his early retirement from the fairways.

While Miles was taking his extended tour break he obviously had to work, and so in his booming native town he found suitable employment on a building site. Miles, by his own admission, had an edge over his work-site colleagues when it came to the old grey matter. He was never seen on tour without a copy of a broadsheet cryptic crossword, which he frequently had completed before midday. Despite the impression that many players have of caddies on tour, it seems that they confuse talent in their cases for intelligence. Greg Turner was more astute when he assessed that the collective IQ tally in the caddie-shack far outweighed that in the locker-room.

So Miles often found himself with the walkie-talkie on site directing the crane operator, as the foreman recognised his superior intellect and ability to give good directions.

The way you direct a crane operator, I have been reliably informed, is by creating a mirror image and therefore calling the shots to the operator as he would see them. Thus, "slew left", as Miles saw it, became slew right for the operator. Now, without offending too many women, I know that this mirror imaging would have been ideally suited to my girlfriend to whom right means left.

Many others would have to think and subsequently articulate against their nature. Miles had become accustomed to the opposite call, it came naturally to him after a short time.

All very well, but of course in caddying "left" and "right" are fundamental words in caddie-speak and frequently used for wind directions, slopes, falls, pin locations on greens - in fact I cannot think of many player- caddie conversations on course that don't involve at least one left or right in them. So for a man who has spent a year saying left for right, it may naturally be slightly confusing once back on the links.

When Ian Woosnam carved his approach shot right of the ninth green at the K Club last week in the first round and it went careering towards the gallery, his caddie hollered "Fore Left". It came as no surprise to me but was greeted with amazement by my boss, Paul Lawrie. I attempted to explain as briefly as possible, between shots, that Miles used to give directions to a crane operator.

Now, being a toter, you tend to be conscious of firing a comment to your player from "left field", so to speak. Not having the time to explain while Darren Clarke hit his approach shot, I was anxious that I might cause my man to lose focus. Thankfully he hit a good second shot to 15 feet, but managed to three-putt from there.

It was then that it struck me that Miles had been reading greens for his boss all day, with great effect, and that perhaps there had been a few crane operator friendly mirror images translated to the Welshman in his directions of "left lip or right lip".

Miles had developed a fool proof method of giving his boss directions on the short grass by cleverly pointing at an old pitch-mark, spike mark or general blemish, of which there are plenty on the K Club's putting surfaces, and thus avoiding the possible confusion of the mirror image read. Judging by Woosnam's success last week, Miles had no building site flash backs on the greens.

The Cinderella story of the week, despite Miles Byrne's very fast comeback to caddying, has got to be that of Mark Mouland. Mouland finished 26th in the Tour School last year having lost his card after a long career on the European Tour. Due to his ranking, Mouland was not exempt for the European Open. He was first reserve and got into the event on Tuesday last. The only trouble was that nobody told him that he was in the event. So when he received a phone call from an astute caddie, "Man in the Pub", asking him who was working for him, he naturally replied nobody, because as far as he knew he wasn't playing.

He eventually arrived late on Wednesday, walked the course in a somewhat rushed preparation, finished fifth in the tournament, made the biggest cheque of his career and secured his playing rights for next year. Just as well the Man in the Pub was efficient; the only trouble for the caddie bearing good news was that he didn't get the bag. Mouland brought "The Boy Wonder" over to caddie for him. It was a wonder.