It’s not easy keeping up with Austin Smith and his two pals at City Park Golf Course – even though Smith, who will turn 71 on Monday, is the kid of the bunch.
First, you’d better keep the ball in the fairway. Smith rarely misses the short grass. And Jim Butz (80) and Skip Taylor (77) hit it straighter than he does.
“Butz is the most accurate,” Taylor conceded. “When he misses a fairway, you can about put it on the calendar.”
And there’s one other thing. To join these live wires – and they do enjoy company – report to the No. 1 tee box a few minutes before 6. That’s 6 a.m.
“The only time I’ve ever seen those three guys sitting around in the morning was if there was a frost delay,” said Ken Shearer, recently retired from the golf division of the city and county of Denver.
Smith, Butz and Taylor try to play Monday through Thursday at City Park, year round. They were playing five times a week until the Denver city courses declared in January 2005 that Friday play should be included in the higher weekend rate.
Often the trio tees off before lights come on in the pro shop, then pays greens fees after walking 18. And in a time when 5-hour rounds are becoming commonplace, they wonder why it took so long if they’re not done in 3 hours, 15 minutes.
“When somebody beats us out here,” Smith said, “they know they’d better play fast or get out of the way.”
It’s been that way for almost a decade, since Butz, Smith and Taylor became a regular threesome. They came together, they joke, from attrition.
“I was playing with other guys,” Smith said. “Some guys moved away. Some guys died.”
At which point Taylor added, “And somebody would get mad at somebody and didn’t want to play with him anymore. We were looking for somebody to play with. We just kind of came together.”
They have kept playing together, week in and week out, except when health issues intervened. Their threesome was interrupted for 18 months while Smith recovered from open-heart surgery to replace a valve. The seven-hour operation was performed Nov. 1, 2004. Afterward, Smith learned the surgeon removed his heart from his chest to make the repairs.
“The doctor told me later that after he put it back in he had to check for leaks,” said Smith, shaking his head. “I told him, ‘Hey, you make it sound like you were fixing a flat tire or something.”‘
Smith, who grew up in Pueblo, retired in 1987 from a position in the engineering department of the Bureau of Reclamation at the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood. He later volunteered as a mathematics teacher for Denver Public Schools for several years before deciding it was time to work on his golf game.
“I think my wife is more upset than I am when it snows and we can’t play, because I’m around the house all day,” Smith said.
Butz retired 25 years ago from a supervisor’s job in circulation with The Denver Post. He barely slowed down after a quintuple heart bypass a dozen years ago. He never had hit a golf ball before retirement.
“I was visiting a daughter in California, and she and her husband lived near a golf course and wanted me to try it,” Butz recalled. “I told them, ‘I don’t want to hit no white ball around.’ But I liked it.”
Also retired, Taylor was a carpenter and union supervisor. He grew up in the Washington area and moved to Denver in his mid-20s after developing a severe case of asthma.
“They told me if I stayed back East I’d be dead within a year,” Taylor said.
“Yeah, right,” Butz interjected. “They kicked him out.”
Taylor wanted Butz to tell the story about the “guarantee” he just got.
“Actually, it’s a warranty,” Butz said. “I got a new swamp cooler and somebody said it has a 25-year warranty. I told him, ‘What the heck am I going to do with a 25-year warranty? I’d be 105!”‘
The trio sometimes ventures out to other golf courses but aren’t about to abandon City Park.
“We get around a little bit,” said Smith, who lives about a mile from City Park. “But when we do, we miss this golf course. It is so well maintained.”
And now, thanks to the pond that was added along the right side of No. 6, these guys rarely need to buy golf balls. Each carries a ball retriever in his bag, and they can replenish their supply at the water’s edge.
The three take their golf seriously. Smith usually scores in the high 70s-low 80s range. Taylor is a mid-80s player and Butz a high 80s-low 90s kind of guy. But they decided long ago that ribbing each other during their games is much more fun than worrying about who has the lowest score.
They never play for money and usually don’t ask each other about scores. The joy in this game is simply playing.
“If you want to lose a friend, play him for money,” Taylor said. “This way, we get exercise and say hello each morning to a lot of the same people out jogging or walking their dogs. And we give each other hell.”
Staff writer Tom Kensler can be reached at 303-820-5456 or tkensler@denverpost.com.
