John O'Sullivan talks to the men behind a company which offers a club custom-fitting service and tutoring from a PGA teaching pro Custom service and teaching combined ... Derek Murray and Brian Hurley

It's a striking success story, albeit one still in swaddling clothes. Fore Golf, a company which offers a combination of custom fitting and teaching, sees Derek Murray and Brian Hurley working with Ireland's leading professional and amateur golfers, while also offering a service to the public.

The team is completed by Murray's father, Don, sister Jill, and Kate Stafford. What started as a one-person operation out of a tiny shop in Naas - which now serves as a club-building facility - could be transformed, probably within the next 12 months, into a custom-built golf centre.

At present, the company operates out of the Red Lane Golf Centre in Naas, where all the custom fitting and teaching is done. It is here "Bessie", the old Taylor Made tour van, is parked most days, laden with over €50,000 worth of custom fitting equipment - it costs € 8,000 to insure each year - allowing Murray and his cohorts the flexibility to travel if required. It also underlines the financial commitment to the business, one initially underpinned by personal sacrifices.

Derek Murray could have been a professional footballer - he was offered trials with a couple of English clubs as a 15 year old - but a chance meeting with a former European tour professional, Ireland's Raymond Burns, proved to be a seminal moment in his career.

"I worked in the K Club for four and a half years as the retail manager. It was at that time I met Ramie Burns," the 29-year-old recalls. "I always had a bit of a passion for equipment, I was a bit of a 'tech-freak', reading about shafts, club heads and the differences and so forth. He invited me out on to the (European) tour for a couple of tournaments and while I was out there I had to mosey into the Mizuno truck, where Barry Willis was working.

"I got a close-up look at players changing length of club and loft, tweaking things here and there, and I was intrigued. The two Japanese guys working there allowed me carte blanche in terms of watching them at work and I was fascinated by the golfers making constant changes to their clubs, especially just before a tournament. I began to work the range, just walking up and down and then returning to the truck to see the clubs being altered.

"I happened to go out for dinner one night while travelling on the tour with Philip Walton and Ramie, and Philip suggested it was something I might consider doing in Ireland. In his experience of playing with club golfers in Ireland, he noticed they used equipment clearly not suited to them. Not that the professionals are necessarily great judges when it comes to equipment, as I have learnt to my surprise down through the years. They rely on the guys in the vans to understand what they are looking for.

"Philip pointed out that average golfers were using drivers that could only be wielded properly by professionals. He suggested I set up a situation where they could come and get advice and understand it all a bit more.

"So I looked into doing the PGA course but at the time it was the old syllabus and not as technical as it is now; I decided against that and found a company called Golfsmith. They are an American company with an English subsidiary and they do courses on club fitting and club making, basic construction principles."

Murray then went to Arizona to Ping, where he studied the art of club building, subsequently taking himself around several companies. On his return he had a proposition for his father Don. "He was working as a production manager in a quarry but was always into the design side of things. When I came back from doing my courses he said, 'let's put a shop up', and we did, in Naas.

"I then went back out on tour with Raymond, his last year on tour, and really soaked up as much information as I could. I got access to all the tour vans because of him (Burns). I figured if I could learn about it at a very high level it would be very easy for me to take what I needed from that level and apply it to the amateur market.

"I came back, went to all the companies and said we were going to do custom fitting in Ireland. My dad was doing part-time work for me, coming in on a Saturday. I was doing the custom fitting, the building and the club repairs."

Murray worked with Francis Howley and Gary Murphy when they were at home from the tour. They had questions, Murray offered unbiased answers, not suffering from the product myopia of the company range reps on tour. "With me it didn't matter what the brand was as long as the club was right. I didn't have a biased opinion. I didn't care whether you used a Taylor Made or a Titleist as long as the club was right for you."

He eventually approached his dad about giving up his work in the quarry, an offer that was accepted with relish. "He has an engineering background, which suited me. He was very particular about how the clubs went together and that gave me the flexibility to dedicate myself more to the fitting side of things. I knew somebody was building all day so that allowed us to expand in terms of volume.

"I had to make huge sacrifices in the early days of the business. I didn't draw wages for four years. I sold a lot of personal items that I had accumulated over the years: I had to sell them to keep the business alive, mainly golfing memorabilia. I had some lovely stuff but had to relent in the face of economic necessity."

Three years ago a chance conversation with Barry Nestor, the Cleveland rep in Ireland, ended up with Murray working as a technical rep for the company at a couple of Irish-based European tour events. He ended up building wedges for the likes of Michael Campbell. The offer of a full-time position and his fledgling business were irreconcilable, although he still works at the Irish-based events.

His priority is to build up the business, his attention to detail commencing with the letter sent out when someone requests a custom fitting session.

"We send out a letter confirming the time of the one-hour session (which costs €60). My maxim would be, 'if it's not broken then don't fix it'. If a guy is hitting his driver 285 yards down the middle then I'm not going to get him to change it. We look at the area in which a golfer might be struggling and that comes under the five headings, driver, fairway woods, irons, wedges and putter.

"I don't believe in sets. I believe in clubs for jobs. We go through the process (custom fitting) and then check your clubs to see what you have. Swing speed, posture and flight of ball, all this information feedback is vital. I don't care what brand you want to use, I just want the customer to have a set of golf clubs he loves and improves with; that's crucial."

At 29 years of age and in the last throes of bachelorhood, Murray is every much upwardly mobile, manifest in his appointment as official custom fitter to the Golfing Union of Ireland (GUI), with responsibility for all national teams.

It must all seem a far cry from his days at the Antonian College Preparatory, a Catholic boys school in Texas - Don was working in the USA at the time - where he was on a books and tuition paid soccer scholarship. He didn't take up golf until he was 19, but, despite getting down to a five handicap, didn't have any aspirations to play seriously or to teach. "I was more captivated by golf club technology."

The reverse would be true of 27-year-old Cork-born Brian Hurley, although he, too, eschewed the conventional route initially to his current status as a PGA teaching professional. He played golf from about nine years of age in Douglas, enjoyed a brief flirtation with basketball, winning a Munster medal, before golf took a firm grip.

"When I was 17 I won an All-Ireland medal in Carlow, in schools golf, and that's when the sport became a priority."

By the time he left school hishandicap was down to scratch. He departed for Kingston University, London, to do a degree in golf studies and it was during that time that he did a six-month stint at the K Club. There he met Murray and a friendship grew that would have greater ramifications five years later.

Hurley decided to become a PGA professional, undergoing his training at Luttrellstown ("I had a fabulous time there") before getting the opportunity to go to Loch Lomond. "It was too good an opportunity to miss. I had three wonderful years there as assistant to Colin Campbell. It opened the door for me to work in America for a couple of years (Tampa, Florida). When I came home last Christmas I hadn't made up mind about staying in America.

"I never intended to stay working in a golf club all my life because it is a tough life, seven days a week, long hours during the summer and you are at the whim of committees in golf clubs."

He decided to take up Murray's offer of a position in Fore Golf: Hurley teaches but also does his fair share of the custom fitting. He is happy and the adrenaline rush of a project that will see Fore Golf move to new premises within a year excites both Murray and Hurley.

The company ethos is probably best encapsulated by a recent encounter with a father and son. Hurley explains: "We had a fella drive from Dublin and say 'my young son needs a driver'. The youngster had a very strong three wood with a 12 degree loft, it was almost like a driver in itself. The father wanted to buy him a driver.

"I was getting nowhere and so I asked Derek to step in, in case I was missing something he could spot. We came to the conclusion that while we did have a driver in the van that would suit him, would it make a significant difference to his game, one worth €600? The answer was 'no'. The father wouldn't accept it.

"The easiest thing in the world would have been to sell him the driver. Instead after several phone calls we steered him in the direction of tuition. He's shooting in the 70s, using the three wood. We did the right thing by him. We don't sell golf clubs for the sake of selling golf clubs. We value our reputation and that won't be established by flogging equipment willy, nilly."

While Fore Golf does cater to the elite, they are at pains to point out that their core market is the average, below or above, golfer. As Murray puts it: "I take pleasure in getting the right set of clubs for a person irrespective of handicap or ability."