A hall of famer shared a family wart.
And I admire the public admission because most families can relate to it in one way or another.
Billy Casper, 73, a native of San Diego who has a house in Mapleton, told Golf Digest one of his 11 kids has struggled mightily in life. In fact, David Casper is in prison and he's not getting out.
Billy Casper won 51 PGA Tour events during his career. At one time he was considered one of the best putters in the game until Ben Crenshaw came out of Texas. He won the Vardon Trophy five times. That little piece of hardware goes to the top putter on tour.
Casper's most famous round came in the U.S. Open in 1966 when he trailed Arnold Palmer by seven with nine holes to play. Palmer looked invincible and in total control. But Casper tied Palmer on No. 17, and the Open went into a playoff the next day. Casper won. Palmer was never the same.
In his heyday, Casper was a fierce competitor with a total game. He remains a living legend, and we're lucky to get a glimpse of Billy every summer when he makes the stop at Thanksgiving Point for the Champions Challenge. There, he is cordial, polite, entertaining, and he stands up and competes with his son Bobby.
But as great a champion as Casper was and is, he is not a perfect man. And his family, his real treasure in life, has always had all of his attention throughout the years.
At times, the Casper family was Billy's motivation to win. There isn't a thing, if Billy could do it, he wouldn't do for his family, according to lifetime friends like Don Collett, a former Provo Open champion who also lives in San Diego. Yet, David, a son of Billy, failed.
David Casper is in a Nevada prison. There is little hope he will ever be a free man.
"It's a sickening feeling," Casper told Golf Digest in the April 2005 issue. "In my religion — I'm a Mormon — there's a saying: 'No other success can compensate for failure in the home.' Shirley and I have agonized over where we might have gone wrong with David. We gave all our children the same opportunities, the same guidance, the same amount of attention and love. What happened to our David?"
That is a question for the ages. Adam with Cain and Abel. Fill in the names and addresses. We all have family members where the building blocks don't add up. Not everybody fits. And not everybody follows the program — whatever is deemed to be what counts.
Unfortunately, sometimes kids go off the beaten path — way off. And you can't get them back.
It is heartening to read the account of Casper's son, not because he had one go astray with society, but because he shared what some may want hidden away.
Casper remembers when his son was paroled. He had a dream. In that dream David was pacing outside the home and Billy told him to come in, that everything would be OK. "David looked at me and said, 'No, I'm going the other way.' "
Casper said the dream was vivid, the kind that is almost like real life. "Shortly after that David went wild. He committed 35 felonies, including armed robberies, got caught after a confrontation with the police, and that was it for him. The day they took David off to prison, he left through a door with a small window. I remember looking through that little window and waving goodbye. Heartbreaking."
I liked the approach Billy Casper took in sharing his story of David. He knows it isn't uplifting, it hasn't had a good ending and maybe never will. He didn't share it to be preachy or prove a point about morality or choices or teaching as a father.
He did it to provide a tidbit of comfort to mothers and fathers. "They should know that it can happen to anyone. So parents shouldn't beat themselves up too badly."
Thanks for sharing, Billy.
Casper knows the percentages outside six feet — 50 percent. Ten of 11 isn't that bad.
E-mail: dharmon@desnews.com