Birdies and bogies: Golf Europe

It is an important time of year for the golf equipment industry as every manufacturer prepares to launch their new kit for next year. Jeremy Ellwood and I are off to Munich this weekend for Golf Europe which will consist of thousands of brand new clubs for us to examine. We will report back with all the latest designs in next month's magazine and right here on golf-monthly.co.uk.

Coincidently Golf Europe just so happens to take place during the 17 days of celebrations known as Oktoberfest. Now if you look up Oktoberfest on the internet you will be greeted with some fantastic quotes that include "Beer plays a central role in the fair" and "Visitors also consume large quantities of food, most of it traditional hearty fare such as sausage". Now these two sentences suggest that Oktoberfest may be heaven on earth and on Sunday night we will experience it for ourselves. We will give you a full report on the weekends adventures early next week but in the meantime I leave you with some fascinating Oktoberfest facts;

12,000 people are employed at the Oktoberfest. Of these, 1600 are barmaids

There is seating available for 100,000 people.

6.1 million mugs of beer were sold at the 2006 event along with 102 roasted oxen, 219,442 sausages and 459,279 roast chickens.