The seeds of Egan story were formed in Waterberry Connecticut USA in 1993 when Les and his father Louis Egan a family dedicated to art of piano construction and tuning travelled from Ireland on a family visit. During their visit they attended a driving range to practice in advance of a game of golf and when driving practice started Les noticed Louis was out of breath and immediately asked “are you all right” Louis replied, “Bending up and down to place the balls on the tee is knocking the wind out of me”, so that day Les placed the balls for his father. Almost immediately, Les formally a piano technician and tuner started thinking “there should be a machine to do this” this set him thinking and during a round of golf Louis and Les talked about a machine that places a golf ball on a tee every time you take a shot so people could avoid bending down. The Egan dream begins. When they returned to the club house, Les asked the club pro if any such devise was available and he replied “I’m not aware of any such devise existing” The dream continued building momentum during the trip home to Ireland and when they arrived back to Ireland Les spent over six months designing and building various concepts in wood from his father’s garage. Louis and Les worked hard from the garage to find one that worked consistently. When a consistent wooden model was constructed Les asked his brother Kevin, a talented tool maker to make a prototype in metal; after much trial and tribulations it began to work well and motivated Les to patent the idea. Unfortunately around the same time Louis health declined and it became clear why he could not bend down to tee the ball. Unfortunately it was due to prostate cancer but despite this, he still remained involved in the development of our idea and gave up his garage and back yard for testing, a space no bigger than a small room. From here Louis happily hit many a ball from a prototype, into a simple net and often commented on the game in America where the idea came to life. In 1999 Les mother died suddenly of cancer, it was a great shock to us all, and especially my father who had become very dependent in on her due to his illness, but like all good families we pulled together and got true it as best we could. In 2005 one month before the final concept became available Les father Louis died of cancer. This was a major stumbling block for Les but after some time Les got back on his feet. Fast forward to 2007. Les made contact with old friends Jonathan and Nigel Mangan who had spent over 15 years building a successful engineering consultancy business focusing on defence, medical, aerospace and automotive industries. When Les shared his concepts to Jonathan and Nigel they were immediately caught by the idea. Jonathan brought to bear his 20 years of real world design, manufacturing and project management skills and Nigel brought 15 years of sales marketing and business development experience. This combined experience provided new insight into the world of business and accelerated the development of our concepts. During one of our many conversations about the dream developed by Louis and Les, Les Jonathan and Nigel decided to collectively make a business arrangement to put the dream into production under the Egan Golf™ Brand. Immediately development accelerated and the dream came to life through a process of redesign styling and market planning for the new generation product which still utilises most of the original mechanism and features Louis and Les worked on. Several exciting ideas are generated and after much deliberation, the dream came to life, Golf Center™ is chosen to take to the market. “Out of the many great things my father has done for me, and out of the many great memories he made available to me I thank my late father for life, leadership and direction." Les Egan 2009 Go to Golf Center