Left alone, this would make for a fascinating article, one that neatly fits Grantland’s unique blend of sports, culture, and society. But instead, Hannan’s focus pivoted from Dr. V’s professional deception to her status as a transgender woman, a fact he clearly viewed with discomfort. Upon discovering that Vanderbilt was born male, Hannan writes that a "chill ran up [his] spine." Later, he elides the wrenching psychological trauma of gender reassignment by referring to Vanderbilt as a "troubled man who reinvented himself,” as if choosing to become female were a typical reaction to a mid-life crisis. Worst of all, he disclosed Dr. V’s transgender status to an investor in Yar, the parent company that owns the Oracle putter.

What’s striking isn’t so much Hannan’s personal fascination with Vanderbilt’s transgender identity, but his inability to separate professional and academic deceitfulness from an issue for which she had a legitimate right to privacy.

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The controversy over “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” isn’t the first tragic intersection of sports journalism and the transgender community. In 2007, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner stunned his readers by announcing that he planned to live as a woman and that, henceforth, he would be known as Christine Daniels. With the support of the Times’ editors and readers, Daniels detailed her experience as a transgender person in a much-praised column. But the next year, the column disappeared. Daniels halted her physical transition, and withdrew from public life. Quietly, she re-appeared in the Times as Mike Penner. In 2009, Penner committed suicide.

Following Penner's death, both the Times and The LA Weekly ran long stories about Christine Daniels, and traced the same tragic arc of her life: After an initial period of euphoria, Daniels slid into depression when her pre-surgical efforts to pass as female were met with difficulty. One episode, in particular, was painful. After encountering Daniels at a work assignment, San Bernardino County Sun columnist Paul Oberjuerge wrote with shocking insensitivity:

She looks like a guy in a dress, pretty much. Except anyone paying any attention isn't going to be fooled—as some people are by veteran transvestites. Maybe this is cruel, but there were women in that room who were born women in body, as well as soul. And the difference between them and Christine was, in my mind, fairly stark. It seemed almost as we're all going along with someone's dress-up role-playing.

Following public outcry, the Sun removed Oberjuerge’s column from its website, but the Times and Weekly both reported that the incident greatly upset Daniels. Again, the language is telling: Caleb Hannan’s use of “personal reinvention” may be nowhere near as offensive as Obajuerge’s “dress-up role-playing,” but the basic sentiment—that transgender people are somehow weak and self-indulgent—is shared between the two.