Asked once at the far end of his tournament career what he might have
done differently, Billy Casper said he wished he hadn’t taken Ben Hogan
as his model of deportment on the golf course. He speculated that if he
had not gone about his business in the stone-cold, robot style of the “Wee
Ice Mon,” the golfing public might have had a warmer response to him.
Not that Casper was given the cold shoulder, but his record as an outstanding champion might have been better recognized. And it is a very
good record indeed.
The gallery must assume from a distance the character and nature of its
champion players, or get it in dribs and drabs from journalists, who may
miss the essence of their subjects. Thus the gallery did not catch on to
Casper as the San Diego pool shark/hustler he’d been in his younger days
or the quick-witted needler hidden beneath the automated golf shot
machine.
Instead the world in general picked up mostly on Casper’s rather bizarre
diet. Because of a lifelong genetic problem with weight—his paternal
grandfather was a 300-pounder, his father weighed in at 350—Casper
included in his bill of fare such supplements as desiccated ox blood and
buffalo meat. The latter, joined with his given name, produced the all-tooobvious Big Bill sobriquet. Would Casper have won more tournaments, more major championships
if he had displayed the looser and more open Billy his close friends knew
him to be? His response is that he probably wouldn’t have done as well.
Casper’s deportment decision was not only Hogan-inspired. After winning his first U.S. Open, at Winged Foot in 1959, Casper began his journey into the Mormon Church, which had at least as much of an impact as
Ben Hogan on his demeanor both on and off the course.
Immediately following the victory at Winged Foot, he was invited to
play in the Utah Open. “It was the first time I had ever met Mormon people as a group,” Casper noted in the introduction to The Good Sense of Golf,
his 1980 instruction book.
“Both my wife, Shirley, and myself were raised as Protestants. We had
no experience at all with Mormonism, and no other real religious background except a belief in the Bible. In Utah the Mormons impressed us
with their close family-unit structure. This was especially important,
because both my wife and I had come from broken homes and we now had
two children and a third on the way. And, I was almost completely tied up
in my golf game. My life consisted of playing golf, fishing, watching television, and playing cards.”
Realizing that his lifestyle not only had the potential for an unsatisfactory marriage but also would stand in the way of his optimizing his talent
for golf, Bill (and Shirley) adopted the Mormon religion. The circumspect
conduct this church demands of its followers was a significant factor in his
private and public deportment, while in adopting it Casper also went
against his grandfather’s advice to live up to the German meaning of his
last name—Casper means “clown.”
Golf is a game best played by those with more than a little self-control.
Billy Casper understood that, acted on it, and became one of the best
golfers the game has ever had. Yet because of his totally understated public persona, the public at large is frequently surprised that Casper is currently sixth on the PGA Tour’s all-time winner’s list. (He also won five
foreign titles—two Brazilian Opens, the Italian and Mexican Opens, and
the Havana Invitational, in the days when Cuba was a golfing mecca.)
Among these victories are two U.S. Opens and a Masters, not to mention
victories in such prestigious nonmajors played on highly challenging layouts as the Western Open (four), the Colonial Invitational (two), the Doral
Open (two), and the Los Angeles Open. Casper also played on eight U.S.
50 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
Ryder Cup teams, captained another, and was a five-time winner of the
Vardon Trophy, awarded by the Tour for low stroke average of the year. Yes,
Bill Casper had a lot of game.
Casper’s personality was shaped by a need or desire to live a balanced
life, but the more exuberant spirit of his youth was evident in the way he
played the game. His swing featured a laterally sliding right foot as he
got to and past impact, and his basic shot was a beautifully controlled fade.
Then there was his short game, in particular his putting. He was, and
will always remain, one of the best putters the game has ever had.
He stood at the ball with the putter held in close to his body in such
a way that his left hand more or less bumped into his left thigh in the
follow-through. It was a conscious thing, Casper’s way of not letting his
left hand break down in the forward stroke and cause pulled putts. As a
result, Casper was the archetypal “pop” putter. He kept the club face so
square in the take-away it appeared shut. The stroke itself was fairly short
and firm. It is a stroke seldom seen in postmodern golf, what with the
incredibly smooth greens the professional golfers now play over day after
day, week after week, on the tournament circuit. Casper’s stroke was a
response to the slower, more uneven public-course greens on which he
grew up around San Diego. It was exceptionally effective because the stroke
was so sound in its simplicity. To this Casper added the cool nerves of
the pool shark he had been as a kid.
Bill Casper was the total package when it came to high-quality golf. He
could drive it in play with adequate length, hit shapely approach shots,
and when a green was missed he had all the stuff to get it up and down
in two—or fewer. The best example of Casper’s complete game was when
he won his second U.S. Open, in 1966, at the Olympic Club in San
Francisco.
It was a kind of sweet-and-sour victory because he defeated golf’s most
beloved icon, Arnold Palmer. As a result, it’s a U.S. Open that has gone
down in history as the one Palmer lost, not the one Casper won. Which
he most certainly did.
Going into the final nine holes of regulation play in the ’66 U.S. Open,
Palmer had a seven-shot lead over Casper. The conventional read of what
happened next was that Palmer was so sure of the victory that he began
taking chances to beat Ben Hogan’s record-winning score of 276 in the
national championship.
Pool Hall Bill • Billy Casper 51
Playing too boldly, even for him, Palmer came back in four-over-par 39.
But here is where Billy Casper gets short shrift. He completed the championship with a very fine 32 to get the tie. A 39 isn’t great golf for a guy
out to win the U.S. Open, but with a seven-shot lead it would probably
pass muster under most circumstances. This wasn’t most circumstances.
Billy Casper was in it, and the ex–pool shark had the spunk and talent of
a masterful predator when he saw a good meal on the hoof.
In the play-off, Palmer again took a nice lead into the final nine—two
strokes. But he came back in 40 to Casper’s solid one-under-par 34. Palmer
wasn’t going for any record in the play-off. He just didn’t have the stuff that
day to close the deal against a player who was not at all intimidated by his
presence and had all the tools to emerge the victor. Alas, it is still thought
of as the Open Arnie lost. “C’est la charisma.” Here was an Open Billy won,
fair and square.
It is a further mark of Casper’s pride of achievement that he made a
major change in his swing action when he became a senior Tour player, to
continue as a viable competitor. The basic left-to-right shot that had
brought him to the pinnacle of his profession takes more energy and flexibility than the swing for a right-to-left trajectory, and by the late 1970s
Casper was no longer up to it.
The wear and tear of more than twenty years playing the PGA Tour (he
began in 1954 and played a few years beyond his last victory, in 1975) and
his ongoing overweight problem found Casper having considerable difficulty playing par golf—incredible, given his record. Bad timing, too, for
the Senior PGA Tour was beginning to take shape in the late seventies. It
presented a fine chance for him to continue making a good living playing
his game.
Casper sought out fellow San Diegan Phil Rodgers for help. Rodgers
was seven years Casper’s junior and had been a fine tour player (winner of
five events, loser to Bob Charles in a play-off for the British Open) and was
turning himself into one of the best teachers in the game.
“With Phil I changed my grip,” Casper recalled, “strengthened it, and
he got me to take the club back to the inside on a flatter plane. He also
eliminated the big lateral slide that had been a central aspect of my swing
since I was a youngster. The idea was to go for the ball in the downswing
more from the inside, instead of down the line.”
