Transgender golfer dreams of playing in LPGA

Paola Boivin, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Transgender golfer aims for LPGA Meet Bobbi Lancaster, formerly Robert Lancaster, who is pursuing a lifelong dream, aiming to play on a professional golf circuit.

Bobbi Lancaster hopes to get a shot to play on the LPGA tour

The LPGA rewrote its rulebook to remove the so-called %22female at birth%22 requirement.

%22I applaud the LPGA for giving me an opportunity to play%2C%22 Lancaster says

The letters were slipped inside a zippered pocket of a briefcase, a brown, weathered keeper of painful secrets.

It sat in the home office of Robert Lancaster, a family doctor with a passion for medicine and golf who could no longer persuade himself to climb out of bed each morning.

Sadness had consumed him.

His wife, Lucy, knew something was wrong. This was her soulmate and best friend, a man who had spent much of his life committed to healing others.

So she did something she normally wouldn't do. She snooped. And she found them, a collection of envelopes that would change everything.

The next decade would bring a journey for both. Lancaster, 62, would be back in the sunlight and pursuing a lifelong dream, aiming to play on a professional golf circuit. Lucy would still be married to her best friend, with one striking difference.

Today, Robert Lancaster is Bobbi Lancaster. The golf tour in sight is the LPGA. After reflection, counseling and gender-reassignment surgery, Lucy's husband had become a woman.

Their relationship and Bobbi's dream will be questioned. Yet both have solid footing.

"It took a lot of soul- searching on my part," says Lucy, 50, who grappled with the change before deciding to stay beside her spouse. "It made me think about what is love, what makes a woman."

If she qualifies for the tour, Gold Canyon's Bobbi Lancaster would be allowed to play. The LPGA several years ago rewrote its rulebook after players voted to remove the so-called "female at birth" requirement. And she would become the latest in a small but growing list of athletes who have crossed or blurred gender boundaries, including Fallon Fox, who on Tuesday came out as the first transgender athlete to compete in mixed martial arts.

Bobbi readily acknowledges she is raising questions about ethics, fairness and even simple physiology. She has questions herself. Although the physical changes of hormone treatment have been measured, there is little understanding of the practical effects on an athlete.

She also hopes to inspire others. Her game, and her life, are not about smashing someone else's expectations. They're just about being Bobbi, who doesn't "buy into the lie anymore, the lie that there's something wrong with me.

"I'm who I'm supposed to be."

Hiding a secret

Robert Lancaster grew up in Canada, in the small southern Ontario farming community of Ridgetown, just 5 miles north of Lake Erie. His father, a World War II paratrooper, was an accountant who also helped organize tournaments at Ridgetown Golf and Curling Club. It was there Lancaster's love of golf was born.

He loved his parents, but his relationship with his father wasn't easy. According to Lancaster, Doug Lancaster, who died in 1984, was an abusive alcoholic who never knew of Robert's struggles.

The young Lancaster embraced summertime because he would spend it at his grandfather's farm. He loved animals, loved the outdoors and loved wearing his cousins' dresses when they weren't looking, like the white, short-sleeved ballerina-style one with pink flowers.

He was top-of-the-class smart but had no confidantes and "incredibly poor social skills."

"When you're hiding big secrets, it's hard to have close friends," Lancaster said.

Inside, he was unsure who he was supposed to be.

Golf game thrives

In 1960, the family relocated to the city of Hamilton, just a half-mile from the prestigious Hamilton Golf and Country Club.

He caddied and played as much as he could, imitating the walk of George Knudson, one of Canada's top pros, and the swing of Arnold Palmer. At 11, he won a caddie tournament at the club, beating peers who were in their late teens.

At 14, he accompanied his dad to the Canadian Open at Mississaugua. While stopping for water near a putting green, a man asked him, "Who's your favorite golfer?"

Lancaster gasped. It was his favorite golfer, American pro "Champagne" Tony Lema.

"You are," Lancaster said.

"How about Jack?" asked Lema, who was standing next to Jack Nicklaus.

"Nah," said Lancaster, who was about to echo words he had heard from his father: "He's too fat."

Everybody laughed, but Lancaster didn't mind.

"From that moment, I was hooked," Lancaster says, looking back. "I was going to be a golfer, a pro golfer, inside the ropes."

Golf was going to be Lancaster's identity, he thought, but his insecurities would creep up around the course, too. If Lancaster won a tournament, he would often fail to show up for the award ceremony.

And he would win. A lot. He was captain of his high-school team and one of the top collegiate golfers in the region while attending McMaster University.

His game was self-taught. He never took lessons and his dad never dished out advice; in fact, he watched his son compete only once.

At 19, he played in a club championship. He was leading by a large margin, on his way to firing a final-round 65, when he stepped to the 18th tee and decided to play a conservative shot on the tricky final hole. As his second shot rolled safely on the green 15 feet past the hole, he spotted his father in the distance.

As others congratulated him after finishing his round, his father walked away. He later approached his son and belittled him for playing conservatively, "like he was never so embarrassed and that he hoped to never be that embarrassed again," Lancaster said.

"It was just the way I was raised," Lancaster said. "It was always 'You've got to do better.'"

For all the inner turmoil, his golf game thrived. He competed in numerous Canadian amateur tournaments and at one Ontario Open found himself in the same field as the players he idolized.

In spite of his father's pressures, Robert had a strong swing and an eye for the game. He was sure of himself on the course.

Elsewhere, he was less sure.

On verge of a meltdown

During medical school at McMaster, Lancaster met and married his first wife, a nursing student. Lancaster tried to fend off the urge to cross-dress, but couldn't stop himself from doing so in private. His wife tried to be accepting, and even made dresses and skirts for him.

His family practice in Canada was a success. He was highly regarded in his community for his nurturing demeanor and a gentleness his patients embraced.

He and his wife had three children, two of whom were adopted.

With three children around, he didn't wear women's clothing for a long time.

"I didn't want to screw with their heads," Lancaster said. "I felt sinful, defective."

As the children got older, the family hungered for a change of scenery and relocated to Phoenix in 1991. Lancaster worked at a family practice based out of St. Joseph's Hospital. He loved the job but found his growing identity crisis was taking a toll on his marriage.

But even as the marriage was crumbling, a new relationship started to blossom.

Lucy Krasner was fresh off a divorce when she joined the practice as a nurse practitioner in 1995 and had no interest in diving into another relationship.

Yet "it quickly became evident we had this incredible connection," she said. "I remember saying to him, 'Can't you see it? It's just here.'"

In time, Lucy had a new job, Lancaster's divorce was final, and the two moved in together. His secret remained secret.

Even the night Lucy discovered it, she didn't really know. At a formal dinner in Scottsdale, she put her arm around her husband and felt a bra through his tuxedo.

"I had no idea," she says now. She was confused, dismissing it as "kinky."

The two married in 1999 and later built a home in Gold Canyon. Robert continued with his successful private practice and played golf. Lucy worked as a nurse practioner and bred and raised award-winning Havanese show dogs.

Lancaster had started poring through medical literature and found a psychiatric name for what he was experiencing: gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person feels there is a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

"When you're feeling sinful, and you feel like you can't share this with anyone, and you know society's attitudes about it, and medicine says you're nuts, you take it all with you," Lancaster said.

Within a year, Robert started to "melt down." There were days he couldn't get himself to go to work in the family practice that he loved.

Lucy was worried. She went into the den, opened up his briefcase and started looking for answers.

There, inside a zippered pocket, she found a stack of letters. They were suicide notes.

Each was addressed to a relative. One was addressed to Lucy.

She confronted him and he bared his soul. He knew he had gender-identity issues and didn't want to live that way anymore.

Several years later, the couple were visiting Lancaster's mother in Canada. On the day of their departure, Lucy was packing to leave when her brother-in-law yelled from the kitchen. "You'd better come here," she remembers him shouting. "Bob has fallen asleep at the table."

When she reached the table, Lancaster's head was hanging over the pancakes. His hand was in the orange juice. He had suffered a stroke.

Path to self-discovery

It was soon discovered the stroke was caused by a hole in Robert's heart that he later had surgically repaired.

"I decided I'm not going to keep living life the way I've been living," Lancaster says now. "I could be gone in six months."

Lancaster began a journey of self-discovery. He saw counselors, took hormones and read everything he could about those with similar experiences.

He was on the path to reaching a conclusion that would give him peace: There was nothing wrong with him. From the beginning, he was wired differently, he learned. It wasn't a choice. It just was.

He started to explore the idea of gender-reassignment surgery. For him, everything was finally becoming right.

For Lucy, everything was wrong.

"I'm slowly dying," she said.

She would worry: "I'm not a lesbian, but now will everyone think I am?"

The surgery came in April 2010. Lucy couldn't bring herself to be there. She visited afterward. At home, she struggled with what to do. She's grateful for the dogs, which kept her from simply running.

"I'm a logical person, and this didn't make sense to me," Lucy said. "I had to find a way to understand it and ultimately accept it. I'm a scientific-based, empirical person. I don't deal with emotion; I deal with science.

"It helped me understand there is some science to it."

Science would help her find the answer.

Legally able to compete

Although the exact cause of gender dysphoria is not known, many doctors theorize that it may be caused by chromosomal abnormalities or hormone imbalances during fetal development.

Transgender athletes competing against other women is not new, but also not common.

The most famous instance is also one of the first: tennis player Renee Richards, who underwent gender-reassignment surgery in 1975 and sparked a groundbreaking New York Supreme Court decision in 1977 that said she was legally a woman and could compete that way.

There have been just a handful of similar cases. Denmark's Mianne Bagger, 46, who had gender-reassignment surgery in 1998, competes on the Ladies European Tour.

The more Lucy came to understand the science, and her spouse's happiness, the more she saw a possible future.

"The relationship is as strong as it ever was and probably more so because we have been through a challenge together and survived," Lucy said. "We have found new ways to express our love for each other."

'What's your dream?'

As time passed, Lancaster believed she could return to competitive golf.

She played in tournaments, including USGA events last summer. She competed in the USGA Senior Women's Amateur Championship in Hershey, Pa., in September after finishing second in a qualifying tournament in Carefree.

She has experienced both success and failure.

At a U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links qualifying event, she was battling for the final spot but lost in a playoff.

At the U.S. Women's Open qualifier, she was so nervous at the first tee that she drove the ball into the dirt and it popped up right in front of her. She calmed down and eagled the last hole, but it was clear to her that there was work to do.

Her confidence has taken a dramatic shift, she said, since seeing sports psychologist Chris Dorris. During their first meeting, Lancaster told him, "You know, I'm transgender. There's something wrong with me."

Lancaster said Dorris got in her face and said, "I don't ever want to (expletive) hear you say there's something wrong with you again."

She believes that now.

"Transgender people, there's nothing wrong with us," she said. "We're just people. I'm not simple. And I'm not a psychiatric diagnosis. …

"He helped me like myself, be comfortable with myself. Now I can put my game face on."

During the second session, Dorris asked, "What's your dream?" At their next meeting, Lancaster said, "To be on the LPGA Tour."

That is her focus now. She put together "Team Bobbi," which includes Dorris, a swing coach, a personal trainer and a rules coach.

Lancaster has played in two Cactus Tour events, a respected local tour, and plans to compete in a local qualifier for the USGA Women's Open in June. In thefall, she hopes to participate in LPGA qualifying school.

She certainly understands the questions about fairness, which is why she has opted for the LPGA Tour and not the senior version, the Legends Tour.

"If I were to compete against women my age, I would have an unfair advantage," she said. "My body got exposed for a long time to testosterone."

Ten years ago, her swing was measured at 109 mph at a Hot Stix club fitting in Scottsdale. Today, it's 96 mph.

While it is clear that testosterone levels and muscle mass drop significantly after hormone therapy and surgery, evidence about how much is limited.

"I applaud the LPGA for giving me an opportunity to play," Lancaster said.

So does her swing coach, Mark Atchison, 36, an assistant pro at Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club.

"You look around all the time and see people wishing they did something," Atchison said. "Here is someone willing to put everything into it to try and make it happen."

In an e-mail, LPGA spokesman Mike Scanlan said that "we will not speculate or comment about a player who is not a member of our organization, though we certainly wish her well in her endeavors."

Most sports organizations have had to address the issue. The International Olympic Committee approved a transgender policy in 2003, and the NCAA did the same in 2011.

Lancaster, who still runs a private practice and does research for speech therapists, is ready to forge on and has many of her longtime patients by her side.

"I've never known a more compassionate human being in my life," Gold Canyon resident Julie Stimple said.

Ultimately, Lancaster hopes to educate and inspire others.

"I've got my own dreams," she said. "But also, if I can turn somebody on, I don't care if it's golf or become the best docent ... just get a dream."

Boivin writes for The Arizona Republic.