After last week, when many of us were out of the office on site visits, the reverse is true this week, with all but Dave and Jeremy in the office, everyone else will be concentrating on reports and design work.

So, what is the office like at EGD Towers?

We’re based in Sunningdale, a small town to the south west of London, close to the famous heathland courses of Sunningdale, Swinley Forest and The Berkshire, as well as a few minutes from Wentworth where one of our parent companies, The European Tour, is headquartered. From the office to Heathrow is a journey of about twenty minutes, Gatwick is forty minutes in the other direction. To the centre of London takes about forty-five minutes on the train, the station being a few minutes walk from the office.

The office itself is on the top floor of an old stable building, dating back to the 1830’s. The main area of the office is open plan, with several of the designers having their own offices off of this room. The open plan area is the nerve-centre – it is from here that the financial, administration and IT functions operate. It’s where people congregate to tell stories of amazing sights, or amazing sites. It’s where we have lunch together every Friday. It’s also home to the EGD indoor putting course. While a very popular game for us, it is less popular with the restaurant downstairs who claim that there is a direct link between the celebrations of a holed putt and their lights swinging from their ceiling (our floor).

One of the other main features in the office is the drinks shelf. We have rule that whenever one of us goes to a new location, they need to bring back the cheapest bottle of local alcohol they can find. In very nearly all cases, ‘cheap’ and ‘tasty’ don’t go hand-in-hand, so while there’s a lot of alcohol on the shelf, very little of it ever gets, or ever will get, drunk.

It was an early start on the Friday, our flight left at 6.15. Will resisted (just) the temptation to have a beer at the airport! We arrived in Dublin, picked up the hire car and headed to Carton House, stopping in Maynooth for a suspect Irish/English breakfast along the way.

We teed off at 11:30 on the Montgomerie Course, fortunately the rough was trimmed and from tee to green we all put in a good show. After many bunker shots, good, bad and ugly, Will and Gary were victorious against Dave and I, winning on the 18th green after I had left a putt short that we needed for a half! A couple of weeks later I think Dave is still angry with me!

After a short drive to the Portmatnock Hotel, a shower and a change, we headed to Dublin for a few pints of Guinness. Gary took us to a rather dodgy ‘locals’ bar but fortunately we survived the evening!

We teed off the next morning (a little blurry eyed) at 9:00. After a mix of good and bad golf again, Dave and Gary won beating Will and I rather easily! That left myself as the only person to lose both matches! The ‘shot of the holiday’ came at the 18th at Portmarnock Links, Gary hitting a 3-wood to about 6 feet from 240 yards out, the surprised look on his face was unforgettable! All in all we had a really good trip and it was great to play two excellent courses designed by EGD!

A big thanks to Dave a Stan for organising the golf!