Phil Hopps has been a member at Chapel Allerton Tennis & Squash Club in Leeds for 40 years.
He joined in 1984 as a "decent" right-hander, but a trapped nerve in his neck in 2002 suddenly left his racket arm virtually lifeless.
Undaunted, he learned how to hit the ball all over again with his left hand. Now, aged 75, he still goes on court every single day.
Every club has a Phil Hopps; the guy who's there so often he may as well sleep on a mattress in the corner.
"When I collapse on court, I don't want them to revive me!" he jokes. "I am at my happiest when I'm on a squash court. I love it. I just feel at home."
As a right-hander, Phil captained a team in the Leeds metro leagues. He remembers: "I once played a young lad from Pontefract, he must have been about eight and I'd have been about 40 at the time. He beat me 3-2. His name was James Willstrop."
But having the ability to take two games off a future world no.1 became a distant dream after an alarming incident on court 22 years ago.
"My arm suddenly felt like wood. I couldn't serve," he recalls.
Months of X-rays, electric shock treatment and several misdiagnoses followed, before doctors eventually identified spondylosis, an arthritic growth in his neck that pinned down on a nerve. It essentially rendered his right bicep muscle inert.
"It had just gone. The muscle was totally dead," he says.
The incident followed a disturbing period a couple of years earlier when all Phil's hair fell out within the space of six months. Looking back, he puts it down to a bodily reaction to major changes that were happening in his industry, graphic design.
"They wanted us to start using computers rather than drawing by hand which caused me quite a lot of stress. It was a bit of a lean time," says Phil.
"My drawing hand soon became pretty useless anyway, so it was lucky in the end that I had the computer to fall back on."
Re-learning a skill from scratch was to become a theme for Phil in middle age. With an indomitable and phlegmatic approach somewhat typical of a Yorkshireman, he switched hands, learned to hit the ball all over again and started playing opponents who he could have beaten blindfolded as a right-hander.
The process was especially difficult as his condition had misaligned his shoulders, making one higher than the other.
"To start with, I couldn't hit the ball," he laughs. "I tried to serve but could only get it halfway up the court. But I have always enjoyed solo practice and I spent hours hitting on my own.
"Gradually, I got better and better. I re-entered the club leagues, but having being three quarters of the way up, I was suddenly down at the bottom. I played someone who would have been my level when I was right-handed in a competition, and I lost 27-0!"
A couple of years on, coach Peter Edwards introduced racketball (Squash 57) at the club and Phil found it was a much more forgiving version of squash.
In the ensuing 20 years, he has played it virtually every day. He has also benefited from two practice partners at the club, Matt Wynne and Jeremy Whiting, who have coincidentally also had to switch hands, in their case due to severe shoulder injuries.
Phil says: "This club was my social life so I didn't want to stop playing - and I enjoyed the challenge.
"I know virtually every squash player at this club, because first I got to know the people at the top, then I got to know the people at the bottom. I am 75 now, and I'll be playing as long as I'm able to."
