'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

"Upon learning this, I told Dick Vitali the whole story and told him I was informing you [Doyle] immediately. During and after the tournament, I have received no money; and shall return to you immediately any money or prizes sent to me. This is my story, and all I can say is that I'm truthfully sorry I had any part in this."

The tournament was held over the Sept. 18-19 weekend; the story didn't break in the World-Telegram & Sun until Nov. 1.

"After the thing hit the newspapers," Vitali says, "Helmar and his wife came to my house. He was hysterically crying and he said he was so sorry for what he did."

By then, Roberts had used most of his Deepdale dollars to buy that green Volkswagen convertible. "It was the first one in New England; it had a radio and a heater, cost me $2,250," he says now in his condo. "When the story broke, Armie came up to see me, but I told him, 'I don't want to meet with you.' I got phone calls from Deepdale members yelling at me. One even said, 'I'm going to destroy you.'

"Several days later, a man who identified himself as Frank Hogan, the New York District Attorney, called. He must have heard about the calls I was getting, because he apologized for the people who had been calling me. He knew I hadn't broken any laws. Golf laws, moral laws, yes. Not criminal laws."

Stuck on the fringe

Banned by The Orchards, Bill Roberts was a golf outcast. Twice divorced with no children, he vaguely describes his life since then as "a mixed bag"--a sixth-grade school teacher, a construction clerk, an investor in real estate (he owns the four-story brick apartment house where his father lived) and the stock market. "Evidently, not too successfully," he says. And he estimates that since the scandal, he has played about 90 rounds of golf, an average of only two or three times a year.

"Not long after the scandal, a friend of mine invited me to play at the Springfield Country Club," he says, looking away now, his eyes misty. "I had just put my tee in the ground when the pro comes running out, yelling, 'He's barred. He's not supposed to play in clubs that belong to the USGA.' My friend grabbed the pro by the shirt and said, 'If he doesn't play, you're out of a job.' It was the nicest thing that ever happened to me. Somebody stood up for me. I played that day, but I never went back."

Has he seen Helmar since the scandal?

"If he walked in this house right now," Roberts says, "I wouldn't know who he was."

Has Roberts ever returned to The Orchards?

"My father wanted me to go there with him in 1972 for a club tournament. I didn't want to go, but I did. We came in third, but some s.o.b. protested. If I'm playing, somebody is going to object. I also wanted to get a PGA card as a club pro. I needed to get three local pros to sign my application. I'd known these pros all my life, but I could get only one to sign."

In 1958, Roberts drove to Toronto for the Canadian Amateur, outside USGA jurisdiction.

"I got sick to my stomach the whole night before the qualifying," he says. "I think I shot 84. I remember somebody telling me, 'See that kid from Ohio over there? He's going to be the greatest golfer who ever lived.' I'd heard that before--we all have--but that kid was Jack Nicklaus. I was on the practice green there when Martin Stanovich, the Fat Man, told me, 'You're Roberts, aren't you? You ruined it for all of us. Get away from me. Go putt at the other end of the green.' "