Nickname: Buffalo Bill
• PGA Tour: 51
• Senior PGA Tour: 8
3
• 1959 U.S. Open
• 1966 U.S. Open
• 1970 Masters
• Member, World Golf Hall of Fame
• PGA Tour Player of the Year, 1966 and 1970
• Vardon Trophy (low scoring average) winner, 1960, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968
• PGA Tour money leader, 1966 and 1968
• Member of U.S. Ryder Cup team 8 times
• Ryder Cup captain, 1979
• Lee Trevino: "When I came up, I focused on Casper. I figured he was twice as good as me, so I watched how he practiced and decided I would practice three times as much as him."
• Johnny Miller: "Billy has the greatest pair of hands God ever gave a human being."
• Chi Chi Rodriguez: "(Casper) was the greatest putter I ever saw ... When golf balls used to leave the factory, they prayed they would get to be putted by Billy."
• Billy Casper: "Oh, I used to make 'em once in a while."
• In 1968, Billy Casper became the first PGA Tour player to win more than $200,000 in a single season.
• Casper and his wife have 11 children, six of them adopted.
• Casper's "Buffalo Bill" nickname, and the buffalo logo that his golf company uses, derive from his diet of buffalo meat and organic vegetables that helped him drop a lot of weight early in his career.
Is Billy Casper the most underrated golfer of all-time? Casper wasn't the biggest name on Tour even in his prime, when he was overshadowed by the "Big 3": Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.
Yet, according to the World Golf Hall of Fame, from 1964 through 1970 Casper won 27 times on the PGA Tour - 4 more times than Nicklaus, and 8 more than Palmer and Player combined. Casper won the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average 5 of the 10 years in the 1960s; he led the money list twice and was Player of the Year in 1966 and 1970.
Casper played on 8 U.S. Ryder Cup teams, winning more points than any other American player.
And he won 51 times in his career. Only Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Byron Nelson won more PGA Tour titles.
So why is Billy Casper often a forgotten man in discussions of golf's greatest players? He was quiet, both in personality and temperament, and he was the antithesis of flashy on the golf course. Also, he won "only" three majors.
One of those majors, however, was legendary. At the 1966 U.S. Open, Casper came from 7 shots back over the final 9 holes to tie Arnold Palmer, then beat Arnie in an 18-hole playoff the following day. But even this accomplishment is remembered more for Palmer's collapse than Casper's charge.
Most of Casper's contemporaries would agree with the "most underrated" label for him. And many of them would agree if you suggested Billy Casper was the greatest putter of all-time.
"Billy Casper," Chi Chi Rodriguez once said, "could make a 40-foot putt just by winking at it." When putting, the World Golf Hall of Fame said about Casper's style, he would take "a pigeon-toed stance and gave the ball a brisk, wristy pop."
Casper's final PGA Tour win came in 1975, and he went on to win 8 more times on the Senior Tour. Casper's post playing career has included designing many golf courses through his company, Billy Casper Golf.
Billy Casper was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1978.
