Trailblazing transgender golfer from Canada vies for place in LPGA tour — at 62
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
March 17, 2013http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Trailblazing+transgender+golfer+from+Canada+vies+place/8111874/story.html
Robert Lancaster was a top-notch Canadian golfer 40 years ago, leading Hamilton's McMaster University to two Ontario championships in the early 1970s and playing as a talented amateur in tournaments alongside such national icons as George Knudson and Moe Norman.
Then a busy career in medicine, a marriage and raising three children pushed golf to the fringe of his life. It wasn't until Dr. Lancaster had moved to Arizona in the early 1990s, divorced his first wife, weathered a bankruptcy, married his second wife and — after a suicidal psychological meltdown — had gender-reassignment surgery in April 2010 that a woman named "Bobbi" Lancaster decided to take another shot at life as a professional golfer.
Now, at age 62, the former men's champion at the tony Hamilton Golf and Country Club is making waves in women's golf in the U.S. southwest, where Lancaster is striving to become the first transgender woman to compete in the LPGA.
"I had a great game and a lot of length and a lot of talent," said the dual Canadian-American citizen, recalling her days as one of Ontario's top young male golfers. "But you have to have a great mind to play at the highest of levels. And I lacked confidence, for many reasons" — chiefly, Lancaster told Postmedia News, the lifelong struggle to resolve her sexual identity.
....
Remarkably, Lancaster's marriage to his second wife, Lucy, would survive the gender transformation.
....
Later this year, she says, she plans to enroll in the LPGA qualifying school.
