BETTING: How the bookmakers see it: Good things come in threes, or so they say, which - after the sort of summer he has endured on the golf course - wouldn't be a bad thing for Paul McGinley, especially with the British Open, the third major of the season, on his mind.

First good omen for the week! On Sunday, after finishing his day's work at the Scottish Open, and following two unsuccessful visits to Glasgow pubs in the hope of finding a live screening of the Dublin-Kildare match, McGinley finally found a hostelry showing the game. Of course Dublin won, which, for someone who once upon a time aspired to wearing the blue jersey, made his day.

Second good omen! Yesterday, he emerged from the TaylorMade equipment trailer that is camped on the practice range here at Muirfield, with a crisp €50 note in his hand. The money had been thrust there by Sergio Garcia, the dividends from a bet struck at the US Open in Bethpage on the Ireland-Spain match (over 90 minutes) in the World Cup. McGinley had missed the cut there, made an early departure, and yesterday was the first time their paths had crossed again.

Third good omen? Still to arrive . . . but simply being at the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers is apparently sufficient to get McGinley's competitive juices flowing.

This is where he made his British Open debut in 1992. He missed the cut - by two shots - but had a hole-in-one at the seventh in his second round and, above all, he remembers this links terrain hard by the Firth of Forth as a favourite venue.

"This is a course that reminds me a lot of Portmarnock in that all the holes go in different directions," said McGinley.

"I like that, there is terrific variety. It's not all the way out, and all the way in. In terms of a golfing experience, St Andrews is my favourite.

"In terms of a golf course, this is the best. I don't like blind shots on a course and, here, the greens are all nicely defined. A large variety of shots have to be played and you are effectively bobbing and weaving throughout the course."

McGinley's tied-14th finish in last weekend's Scottish Open represented a turnaround of sorts for the Dubliner.

Compared to last season, when he had 12 top-10 finishes, this has been a horrid year. In fact, his only top-10 finish of 2002 came in the Dunhill Championship in South Africa and, for a player who only missed one cut in all of last year, spending the weekend away from the golf course has become an all too frequent occurrence. He has missed four of his last seven cuts on the European Tour.

At least Loch Lomond provided some evidence that that tide may have turned.

"I've had a rough, four, five, six weeks," admitted McGinley, "but I have learned a big lesson. I didn't address my technical problems when I should have, and tried to play my way through it instead of sitting down and analysing it.

"After playing those two weeks in Ireland (The Seve Trophy and the Irish PGA), when I didn't hit the ball high for two weeks playing in the wind, I should have come back and got down to the fundamentals. The problem was that I had got too much on my left side, and I'd got the club too much on the inside on my way back, and was making too much of a low draw which turned into a hook."

Missing the cut at The K Club, for a second successive year, proved "the final straw" for the player, who subsequently spent a lot of time with coach Peter Cowen before playing at Loch Lomond where McGinley resorted to the safety option of fading the ball rather than drawing it.

"My game is not where I want it to be yet, but at least it is playable again. I have got more control over what I am doing. I am not setting my expectations too high for this week. I expect to continue the progress I made last week and go forward from there. The big picture is about getting my game back where it was last year and I am getting ready with a view to the Ryder Cup in September."

While McGinley attributes his poor form over much of the summer to a technical problem with his swing, he also admitted to learning a valuable lesson in relation to how he will plan his schedule in the future.

"I made six trips across the Atlantic in a four-month period. There was too much travel and not enough golf. That's the mistake I made. There wasn't so much tiredness in terms of golf, but there was tiredness in terms of travelling. I've learned a lot and won't be making those mistakes again."

If there is a championship designed to get a buzz back into his golf, then the British Open is it. When he first played in the championship here in 1992, he claimed he was "overawed" by the whole experience.

His best finish in a British Open, and indeed his best finish in a major, came in 1996 at Royal Lytham & St Annes, when he was tied-14th. The way he has been playing this season would suggest he is wise on this occasion to keep his feet on the ground and expectation levels low, and simply wait for the third of those omens to come his way.

In preparation, McGinley got his first taste of the course yesterday when playing a practice round in company with Des Smyth. In front of them was the lone figure of Padraig Harrington and behind them the equally solitary figure of Darren Clarke, all seeking to unearth the secrets of the Scottish links in advance of the season's third major.