‘Greatest putter’ in PGA quietly racked up wins
Billy Casper, a two-time U.S. Open victor, a Masters champion and the seventh-winningest player in PGA Tour history, died Saturday at his home in Springville, Utah. He was 83.
Casper died of a heart attack, his company, Billy Casper Golf, announced. His agent, Rich Katz, said Casper had suffered several health setbacks after fainting at the Masters tournament last April.
After several operations, a bout with pneumonia and a month-long hospital stay last December, Casper was recovering in cardio rehabilitation until he started feeling worse last week, his agent said.
A brilliant putter with a superb short game as well, Casper was nonetheless overshadowed in his prime by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. But he won 51PGA Tour events between 1956 and 1975. Only Sam Snead, Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Palmer and Byron Nelson won more PGA tournaments.
Casper played on eight Ryder Cup teams, winning 23.5 points, more than any other American, and he was the captain of the1979 squad. He was the PGA Tour player of the year in 1966 and 1970, and he won the Vardon Trophy for best stroke average five times. He was the tour’s leading money winner twice, and he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1978.
“Billy was a killer on the golf course,” tour pro Dave Marr was quoted as saying by the World Golf Hall of Fame. “He just gave you this terrible feeling he was never going to make a mistake, and then of course he’d drive that stake through your heart with that putter.”
Casper’s first major victory came at the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, when he set a tournament record with only 114 putts over 72 holes. Relying on his short game as well, he laid up in front of the narrow green on the 216-yard par-3 third hole in each round, then got up and down for par.
His most dramatic triumph came at the Olympic Club in San Francisco in the 1966 U.S. Open, when he trailed Palmer by seven strokes with nine holes left, caught him with a four- under 32 and beat him by four shots in an 18-hole playoff. Over the 90 holes, he never three-putted.
“He’s the greatest putter on the pro tour,” Palmer said after losing in the playoff.
Casper won the 1970 Masters in an 18-hole playoff against Gene Littler, his fellow junior golfer from his youth in Southern California. Casper hit what he called the best shot of his career on the par-5 second hole in the playoff, lofting a 9-iron over tall pines and onto the fairway from tall grass with a small log two or 3 inches behind his ball.
Long after his greatest days in golf, Casper pondered his place in the sport’s history.
“I think people recognize what I did more readily than when it happened,” he remarked in 1989. “In my best years, everybody was talking about Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player.”
“Billy didn’t waste energy on galleries, on chit-chat,” former pro golfer and golf analyst Johnny Miller once told the Copley News Service.
“He was out there to get a job done, very professional. He was like a hit man.”