When The G4D Open staged its inaugural edition in 2023, the event wasn’t a consideration for Lucy Leatham but later that year she was involved in a life-changing car accident and is now on the cusp of making her Championship debut.
Such were the severity of her injuries, Leatham was given a one per cent chance of survival at the scene and placed into a medically induced coma.
Despite surgeons saving her life, following 13 hours on the operating table, she required a right arm amputation above the elbow aged 34.
Among other complications because of the accident, Leatham still suffers from a brain injury, affecting memory loss and fatigue.
Her involvement at the Celtic Manor Resort - the first-ever staging of the Championship in Wales - this year is made the more personally meaningful as she worked for a time at the Newport venue.
Having initially dreamt of becoming a PGA Professional, Leatham became a trained club custom-fitter for a leading manufacturer, while she also ran the pro shop at Libbaton Golf Club, her home club in Devon.
"Golf is everything to me now," she said.
"I didn't know about The G4D Open last year, but when I was told about it I wanted to enter it straight away.
"I want to enter everything now, because that was what I used to be like as a golfer.
"I'm really excited to be at Celtic Manor because I used to work there and lived on site so it's great to be back there again."
A golfer since her late teenage years, the impact of the surgery was devastating for Leatham as it brought her haulage business to a premature end.
But the sport has long played a part in her life and in recent times has become a renewed passion through G4D events.
In the past two weeks alone, the 37-year-old, based near Exeter, has played events at St Andrews and the London Golf Club and is now looking forward to joining many of the sport’s most talented golfers with disabilities.
"I just love meeting all these people who've got used to be a normal person and then something bad has happened to them, but I just love people like that," added Leatham, who will compete in Sport Class Standing 2 next week.
"Things happen in life and I just love powering through.
"Everyone has that best friend who moans about everything, and I didn't want that to be me.
"I'm just one of the people that goes out and gets things that people will be like, 'oh, you can't do that'. I'll just go out and try it.
“I enjoy the competitive environment, but when I finish, I hit the wall through tiredness.”
While it is perhaps the Twenty Ten Course that is the more internationally known, having staged the Ryder Cup in 2010, it will be the Roman Road Course that takes on staging duties for the fourth edition of The G4D Open, after three editions at Woburn.
The G4D Open features nine sport classes across multiple impairment groups, with 80 men and women players of both amateur and professional status set to compete.
Contested over three days and across 54 holes of gross stroke play, there are overall men’s and women’s winners and a gross prize in each of the sport classes which cover various categories in Standing, Intellectual, Visual and Sitting. Ireland’s Brendan Lawlor and Daphne van Houten from the Netherlands are the respective defending men’s and women’s champions.
Spectators are encouraged to attend at Celtic Manor for The G4D Open, with attendance and car parking free of charge.
