Billy Casper, seventh all time with 51 PGA Tour wins, dies at 83

Billy Casper, seventh all time with 51 PGA Tour wins, dies at 83

The six guys with more wins? You may have heard of them: Sam Snead, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Byron Nelson.

He was the PGA Tour Money Winner in 1966 and 1968. He was PGA Player of the Year in 1966 and 1970. Casper was generally considered to be the best putter of his generation, and that really paid off in consistently low score averages. Casper won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average five times: 1960, 1963, 1965, 1966, and 1968. Between 1960 and 1968, only two men ever won the Vardon trophy for the lowest scoring average: Casper and Arnold Palmer. Jack Nicklaus never won the Vardon in his entire career. Over nearly a quarter of a century, from 1956 to 1979, Casper and Palmer were the only two golfers to average below 70 for an entire year - and only Casper did it more than once! Casper's scoring average of 69.82 in 1968 was the lowest between 1951 and 1979.

Casper was great in '68, having won the Vardon Cup and the most money, but his best year was probably 1966, when he pulled off the same two feats and also won the U.S. Open, despite the fact that Jack Nicklaus was then 26 and in his prime. (Nicklaus did win two majors that year, and was the leading money winner in the years before and after that one.)

In other words, Billy Casper was a lot better golfer than you think.