Born without part of his right arm, golfer Andrew Austen looks to inspire other athletes with disabilities

If you told Andrew Austen that he couldn’t do something, he would try to prove you wrong. Growing up, the Radnor native loved playing sports. It’s what bonded him and his four siblings and propelled his competitive edge.

He also excelled in them: From soccer to basketball to baseball to golf, he was a natural athlete. But Austen had to work hard, too. The 27-year-old was born without his right forearm and hand. It challenged him as an athlete, although he never viewed it as a disadvantage, more of “an opportunity to prove people wrong.”

“It gave me this chip on my shoulder,” Austen said. “It’s why I have such a love and passion for sports — it really goes for everything [in life], the idea of showing somebody out there who has maybe four limbs, that just because you don’t, [that] doesn’t mean you can’t do everything that everyone else can.”

Austen is proud of who he is, and over the last few years, he’s been using his story as way to empower other athletes with disabilities — and golf has been his platform to do it.

After graduating from the College of Charleston in 2020, with a degree in business administration, Austen got back into golf, a sport he dabbled in growing up — his parents were members at St. Davids Golf Club in Wayne. He started to devote more time to it, and it has led him to become the eighth-ranked adaptive golfer in the nation in the G5 classification.

On Monday, he’ll compete in the fourth annual U.S. Adaptive Open, which showcases the world’s best golfers with disabilities, at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md.

“I’ve kind of heard amazing things about this tournament,” said Austen, who now golfs at City of Charleston Municipal Golf Course, in South Carolina, where he resides and works as a coaching community manager for The Ideal Life coaching platform. “I know it’s the Holy Grail for adaptive golfers. I’m excited, and I’m ready to compete with the best ones out there.”

This is Austen’s first time qualifying for the event. He has done 10 other adaptive tournaments, and while it’s competitive, Austen said, the best part of participating in these events is meeting new people to connect with on a different level.

It also has helped him find comfort in his own skin.

“I think these last 16 months, I’ve really found myself living into my purpose,” Austen said. “For me, my purpose is my passion to inspire. I think it’s doing these things, like competitions, Instagram, and TikTok content to show people that anything’s possible. I think if I can use my platform and help one person out there, I’m doing my part.”

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In 2020, Austen started posting golf videos on social media and they took off. His videos range from him driving to playing a hole to putting on his prosthetic. His Instagram has more than 13,700 followers, while his TikTok is up to 18,500.

He also goes by the handle name “jimmythekiiid,” a nickname that started in college, and he referred to it as his “social media alter ego.”

“I would say bringing awareness was the easy part,” Austen said. “Then as I’ve become more engaged and involved with the adaptive community and hearing different stories it’s so cool to see how everybody makes light of such traumatic stories. I think it’s allowed me to lean into that a little bit. As you grow up and have people that are close to you, friends, family, who know you, it’s almost like they forget you have one arm, and the jokes are always there. To me, the only way to live through it is just to joke about it, like it doesn’t have to be this serious thing.”

Austen has felt the stares before, whether it was when he was in school or at social events — and they have not gone away. However, he never feels out of place. He credits his parents for instilling that image of him at a young age.

“My parents had told me, when they learned that I was going to be born the way I was, the doctor told them, ‘Hey, if you don’t have a problem with it, he won’t have a problem with it, either,’” said Austen, whose mother, Mary Stengel Austen, is on The Inquirer’s board of directors. “That’s kind of how they raised me — not that they ignored it, but they made me feel like I wasn’t different than anyone else. I think that’s something that’s really important to who I am still to this day.”

Playing sports was the place he could best identify with as a child, but before he entered Radnor High School, one experience made him feel as if his disability was holding him back.

Austen tried out for the boys’ basketball team in eighth grade but didn’t make it. He was crushed. Basketball at the time, he said, was his best sport and one he had the most skills in. However, the coach offered him an opportunity to be the team manager and eventually he could see some playing time. He decided to take his former coach up on the offer and something inside him changed.

“Something in my head clicked that gave me a drive to be better, not just in basketball, but in everything,” Austen said. “Not let anybody see me differently than somebody who has two arms and two legs, so by the end of the eighth grade season, I was in the starting five, which I think is something that I’m proud of.”

It serves as a reminder of everything he has worked toward.

Austen isn’t one to be told he can’t do something. He hopes others who are going through something similar know that they can.

“It’s easy to just say no or I can’t do it,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to do anything if you don’t try it, and it’s cliché, but I really do think for me, the turning point was letting go of what other people thought of me and allowing myself to struggle in order to grow.”