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<\/a>Billy Casper accepted the PGA Distinguished Service Award from PGA President Jim Remy in 2010.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nIf I were going to choose the most under-rated professional golfer of the 20th<\/sup> Century, one names stands well above the rest\u2026\u00a0 No, its not Paul Runyon, Cary Middlecoff, Julius Boros, Horton Smith, or MacDonald Smith though many would not have a clue of their excellent playing records.\u00a0 It\u2019s San Diego\u2019s Billy Casper who has recently turned eighty.<\/strong> When twenty career wins seems like an automatic Hall of Fame entry today, Casper\u2019s total of fifty-one Tour events is monumental.\u00a0 Only six professional golfers have ever achieved more career victories.<\/p>\n And who was his competition?\u00a0 It was no less than Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Lee Trevino in their primes.\u00a0 Sam Snead and Ben Hogan were still around as were a host of other very creditable closers.\u00a0 Super sports agent, Mark McCormack, did a tremendous job in promoting the \u201cBig Three,\u201d of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus.\u00a0 If you were around during the 60\u2019s, you might have thought that no one else ever won a golf tournament due to the extraordinary marketing buzz McCormack created for his clients.\u00a0 They even had their own television exhibition series, Big Three Golf.\u00a0 So catch this fact:\u00a0 during one ten-year stretch the Big Three combined to win twenty-two events.\u00a0 Bill Casper won 17 all by himself.\u00a0 From 1964 to 1970, Casper won 27 PGA Tour events, eight more than Palmer and Player combined, and four more than Nicklaus.<\/p>\n A younger, slimmer Billy Casper dusted off Arnold Palmer in dramatic fashion at the 1966 US Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club.<\/p><\/div>\n Two US Opens and a 1970 Masters Title together with a record five Vardon Trophies for the best scoring average puts Casper light years beyond many other players. \u00a0Twice the Tour\u2019 leading money winner, Casper was the first player to win more than $200,000 in a single season, and with his 43rd<\/sup> victory in Los Angeles in 1969, he became only the second player to bypass $1 million in career earnings.\u00a0 (My how things have changed.)<\/p>\n Arnold Palmer was known as the charger, but Casper made up huge deficits to beat Palmer, himself, at the 1966 US Open in San Francisco as well as well as coming from way back from a similar margin to beat Lee Trevino to win the Alcan Golfer of the Year Open in Portland.\u00a0 And if Nicklaus or Palmer were a feared match play competitor, none rivaled Casper\u2019s Ryder Cup record of playing on eight Ryder Cup teams winning more points than any other American with 23.5!\u00a0 Casper was also the non-playing Captain of the victorious 1979 American team.<\/p>\n As a senior Tour player, Casper won nine more times including two Senior \u201cmajors.\u201d\u00a0 His last victory was the 1989 Transamerica title at Silverado, some eighteen years after winning the Kaiser International on the same course.<\/p>\n Casper was not known for being a long hitter, but he was a smart player and with his wristy putting stroke and terrific hand-eye coordination, one of the all-time best putters in golf.\u00a0 Patterning his style of play after his idol, Ben Hogan, he was a thoughtful tactician on the course, never beating himself.\u00a0 Like Hogan, he seldom smiled or showed much emotion.\u00a0 Thus, Billy Casper did not attract nearly the attention of the so-called \u201cBig Three\u201d who were marketed full-time.\u00a0 It seemed that he got more attention for his allergies, his unusual, but long ago abandoned buffalo diet, and his conversion to Mormonism.<\/p>\n Casper was introduced to the game of golf by his father before the age of five and began caddying at eleven. \u00a0Assisted by his father and uncle, the junior golfer would practice his game making use of three golf holes that they built in a cow pasture on his grandfather\u2019s ranch in New Mexico. \u00a0Casper attended the University of Notre Dame on a golf scholarship in 1950 before enlisting in the U.S. Navy.\u00a0 He served until June 1955 and played on the Navy\u2019s golf team before turning professional.<\/p>\n Now eighty years young, it has been a long time since Billy Casper seriously competed, but he kept busy with corporate outings as well as his golf architecture and golf management companies.\u00a0 Now he is largely retired and together with wife Shirley tends to his large family that includes eleven children, thirty-eight grandchildren, and eleven great grandchildren.\u00a0 If I had a Fantasy League all-time golf team, you can bet that I would be seeking Billy Casper, quietly one of golf\u2019s all-time greatest players.\u00a0 He could flat out play!<\/p>\n Shown below winning in 1970, none were more efficient around the greens as Billy Casper though he had the all-around game to back it up.<\/p>\n P.S. \u00a0Bill Casper passed away in February, 2015 and left a legacy of magnificent golf and an even greater one as a loving man and father!<\/em><\/p>\n
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