Lana Lawless Is Transgender Golf Champion

Lana Lawless is the current Women’s Long Drive Golf Champ, a sport driven by power, muscle and speed. How she got to where she is today is not your usual golf champ story - Lana use to be a man. Read more about her below, see a photo and a video.Lana is a 55 year old bartender from Palm Springs, California who is transgendered. In fact, Lana was was a S.W.A.T. cop for 18 years working the gang unit in a very tough Southern California city.

“I had a very tough and mean exterior. People didn’t want to mess with me. I had a hard exterior, but I was compassionate inside. I always let the gay guys go; they had enough drama in their lives.”As a man, Lana had been married but fathered no children. “I was hiding in the straight world,” she said, “but Lana was always in there, and I wanted her to live. I had started to go to L.A. to the clubs, playing dress-up on the weekends, but I wanted to be a normal girl.”

For 21 years, the big, burly swat cop played golf at a private club, got down to a plus-1 handicap and even won the club championship. But, after gender-reassignment surgery, she left golf and all her old friends behind. “Other than my family, I have no friends from my previous life,” she said.After watching the 2006 ESPN broadcast of the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship, her interest was peaked and she was drawn back into golf.

The image of a big burly policeman-turned-woman golf champ doesn’t sit easily with many of the other golfers because Long Drive is a sport driven by power, muscle and speed.“I am shocked more women are not complaining about this,” three-time world champion Sean “The Beast” Fister said. “It’s not an apples-to-apples deal. Men and women are different.”The rules governing transgender golf competition are precise but numerous. For Lana, they included mandatory doctor reports, lab results within normal female limits and onsite testing.

“I am a woman,” insists Lana Lawless, who adopted her new name from classic-movie star Lana Turner but doesn’t want to discuss her previous name. “I’ve lost muscle mass. I don’t have big guns (biceps). They give you a drug that stops you from producing testosterone. Your muscles atrophy. In about seven months, I went from 245 pounds to 175 pounds. I’ve gained back a little bit, but I feel like I don’t have any power.”Well, clearly she has enough power to drive the ball. Lana ‘Heartbreaker’ Lawless won the 2008 Long Drive Championship with a drive of 335 yards.