The fiercely competitive Richard Saunders (above); on the course with Tom Cox (below)

Richard Saunders marches up to me on the first tee and firmly clasps my hand. A few seconds later, I have no memory of what the handshake actually felt like, only a lasting impression of strength. Saunders, a Thalidomide victim, was born with no wrists, short arms and very small hands, the right with two fingers, the left with one. In his own words, it’s been “more than 30 years since my wife has had her hand held properly”.

I can’t say exactly how strong Saunders’ hands and arms are but my guess is they are about as strong as mine would be, were I to spend the next 12 months partaking in a rigorous regime of monkey-bar training and squeezing squash balls in every free moment of the day. It’s often said that a golf swing’s main power emanates from the wrists. Conversely, the 19-handicap Saunders, using a wristless technique all of his own, can pump a golf ball 200 yards off the tee.

On August 24 and 25, Saunders will compete in the inaugural Disabled British Open at Old Thorns golf club in Hampshire, for which today is a practice day. In the past, the Society of One-Armed Golfers and the British Amputee & Les Autres Sports Association – of which Saunders is golf chairman – have held their own championships, but this will be the first time that all the disabled groups have competed together.

As well as congenital amputees like Saunders and people who have lost limbs later in life, there will be golfers hitting balls from wheelchairs. As we play, negotiations are under way to secure an appearance by Graham Hunt, a golfer recently paralysed from the waist down by a neurological condition who is now able to hit from an upright position thanks to a £10,000, two-wheeled contraption that clips on to his lower body.

“People tend to stay in their own disabled ghetto,” Saunders tells me. “The blind golfers, for example, usually tend to play just with each other.” I nod, but I’m silently thinking to myself, “Blind people can play golf?”, and remembering the time I briefly lost my eyesight through nerves on the first tee of the Open’s regional qualifying event.

Surely there is a cut-off point in disabled golf to exclude those who aren’t quite disabled enough? And how on earth do you decide where it is? “It’s a difficult issue,” Saunders nods, “and one we’re addressing at the moment. Put it this way: if you’ve just had an artificial knee put in, and can still walk around normally, you won’t be able to enter.” Then there are problems at the other end of the spectrum. “I’m a bit worried about this,” says Saunders as we reach the green of Old Thorns’ vertiginous par four 15th. “I can just see wheelchairs plummeting down that hill. It could be a health and safety nightmare.”

Golf is just one of many sports that Saunders, who is now in his fifties, has mastered over the years. In his early twenties, he worked as a rock-climbing instructor in the Air Training Corps (“the fundamental rule of rock climbing is to not overreach!” he jokes). Until seven years ago, while working full-time as an accountant, he served as a professional football linesman. When he retired, he took up golf – a game at which he’d had some success in pitch ’n’ putt form in his teens. Working in conjunction with Karl Arthur, the chief clubmaker at golf ball and equipment manufacturer Titleist, he designed a set of extra-long clubs that could stay hooked in the crook of his left arm during his swing.

Saunders is one of the most competitive men I’ve ever played against. When he loses his ball, he looks for it for the full, legally permitted five-minute period. It is clearly an immense determination that has led him to achieve so much at a sport that is, even for the most physically privileged people who play it, damned fiddly. I wonder, too, if this determination doesn’t sometimes teeter into perfectionism. “Do you think it was okay?” he asks me about a speech he made to fellow players and media at the pre-practice round breakfast, in which he made a joke about having “short arms and deep pockets”. I assure him it was. “Sure?”

I can see him keeping a close eye on my shots. Time and again, I outdrive him by 100, 150 yards, but he shows me up with his brilliantly controlled putting and chipping, as my risky short shots find bunkers and other greenside trouble. On the 10th tee at Old Thorns, I have a few swings with his clubs, trying, as best I can, to use the same method as him. They feel as heavy and unwieldy as the most elaborate trick-shot club. Keeping the shaft beneath my arm throughout my swing is also extremely limiting.

However, I can see the merits. My swing is a miracle of many moving parts at best, a surprisingly accurate impression of a panicked squid at worst. What if I simplified it? Would I be any worse? It is unlikely. Sadly, I doubt I have the self-discipline to continue with this unfussy style.

Indeed, playing with Saunders shines a spotlight on the greed of my game: my macho need to take on the big shot, my ungrateful disregard for the nuanced beauty of a plotted up-and-down from a green’s edge. That I can’t do better with what I’ve been given seems ungrateful, particularly on the 17th when, despite my straight 340-yard drive and Saunders’ lost 200-yard one, we both end up with bogeys. I ask Saunders if, were he suddenly to wake up with my arms and hands, he would change anything about the way he plays. “Not a thing,” he says.

A wiser man than me, he can see that, in golf, it’s not the despair that’s the problem; it’s the terrible, terrible hope.

pursuits@ft.com

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The details

For more information on the Disabled British Open visit www.disabledbritishopen.org