Baseball Hall of Famer Phil Niekro learned to pitch knuckleballs from his father. Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana was schooled in passing by his dad. When Phil Hellmuth Jr. decided to drop out of the University of Wisconsin to play pro poker, he was definitely not on the same page as his dad, a dean at the school.
“In fact, he hated it,” says Hellmuth.
But this Father’s Day story worked out in the end with a father-son embrace in 1989 in Las Vegas when Hellmuth won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker.