'Everybody cheats. I needed a few dollars': Almost 50 years later, a key figure speaks out on the Deepdale scandal

Golf Digest, March, 2001 by Dave Anderson

Armstrong invited Roberts to sit at his table with several others during dinner and the auction.

"After the first three or four teams were auctioned off, I realized that these people were high-stakes players," Roberts says. "I had about $300 in my pocket, but the teams were going for a lot more. Armie asked me about my handicap, which he thought was 18. I said, 'I'm no 18.' He said, 'You aren't?' I said, 'We're not too bad, but I'm not an 18.'

"He went out and made a phone call," Roberts adds. "When he came back, he told me he had called Joe Mitchell, a good Connecticut amateur, and Joe told him, 'Roberts can hold his own.' Next thing I know, Armie is saying, 'We're going to buy you.' "

Armstrong put up $1,900 for "Field R," the team with Roberts and his presumed partner, Richard Vitali.

"Armie told me, 'When you and your pal come down for the weekend, stay at my house,' " Roberts says.

Vitali's name was still on the auction sheet, but he had declined Roberts' request to play in the Deepdale event.

"I didn't have any money to go to Long Island," says Vitali, now retired in Marco Island, Fla. "I was just getting started in the insurance business. My wife and I had a young son, and we had just bought our first house. I also knew Bill, and I knew that I would probably end up paying for the whole thing. He was capable of doing that. He would come up and say he didn't have it when you got there."

Roberts remembers contacting two or three other golfers before Helmar, whom he knew only casually, agreed to be his Deepdale partner.

After the hoax was discovered, Helmar told The Springfield Union that Roberts had phoned him at 10 o'clock the night before they drove to Deepdale and promised him that all expenses would be taken care of and that Helmar would receive $100 for appearing.

"I should have known better right away," Helmar said at the time. "Why should someone call me up to give me $100 to play in a tournament?"

'I didn't like it, but . . . '

Roberts also mentioned that Helmar would be playing under Vitali's name, because it was now too late to change the names on the entry sheet.

"I didn't like it, but I agreed to do it," Helmar told The Union. "On the way to Long Island, I asked Billy Roberts 20 times where the invitation came from. He said he didn't know, that it was just sent to him."

In his condo now, Roberts remembers teeing off in the last group each day with Helmar, Armstrong and another Sands Point member, Sumner Waters.

"I was surprised that Armstrong was playing with us, but he told me, 'I'm in your group now,' " Roberts says. "As we walked off the first tee, my caddie said, 'I bet $100 on you.' I said, 'Why did you do that? The fellow with me is a chopper.' But my caddie said, 'I noticed your handicaps, 17 and 18.' I'd put us in for a high handicap, a 7 and an 8 as I remember. Somebody had put a '1' before the numbers."

As he talks, Roberts sits for a few minutes in his spartan condominium, then stands, then sits again, often taking a deep breath and wringing his thin hands, occasionally holding his hands to his head.