Volunteers at forefront of pro golf events

SANDY — Back in 1983, when what was then called the PGA Senior Tour made a stop at Jeremy Ranch in Park City and Jim Hutchinson volunteered to help out with the tournament, his motives weren't exactly what you'd call altruistic.

"I wanted to be up front to see the golf and I didn't want to pay," he confesses.

So how did that free pass work out?

Twenty-eight years later, he's still paying back.

Jim, 58, has never stopped volunteering. He's a veritable fixture whenever the professional golf tour comes to Utah. He volunteered for the Senior Tour/Champions Tour events in Park City until they ended in 2002, and he's been involved with the PGA's Nationwide Tour since it first came to Sandy's Willow Creek Country Club in 1999.

He started out as a marshal – "one of those guys holding the quiet sign telling people to shut their mouth" — and has since been a transportation guy, helped arrange player housing and for a couple of years he held the on-course microphone for the Golf Channel.

This week, as the Nationwide tournament runs through Sunday, he's at it again, volunteering his heart out.

This time he's head of the graphics committee. Anything that's printed – signs, player's badges, volunteer handbooks, contestant handbooks, pairings sheets, programs – Jim, who spent 21 years in the printing business, was behind it.

He "retired" three years ago, at 55, when the company he was working for became another victim of the down economy and the Internet and closed its doors.

Jim now works part time for a funeral home, gives thanks daily for his wife, Nancy, who didn't lose her job as a nurse, and spends the rest of his time doing, well, this.

He's one of those selfless guys you never see and without whom the tournament would collapse.

As Laury Livsey, the PGA Tour official and former Utahn who is back home this week working the Nationwide event affirms, "Volunteers like Jim are the backbone of the tournament. Without them there would be no tournament, there would be no donations to charities in the community."

Jim shrugs all this off.

"I do this because I'm the kind of person who needs to keep busy," he says, "and I love to watch golf."

Besides, he gets paid, he'll tell you, just not in the conventional way.