Retirement has been a welcome change of pace for Dennis Lyon, who stepped down at the end of 2010 after more than three decades as manager of golf for the city of Aurora.
“I don’t have to be anywhere at 8 a.m. every day — except maybe at the breakfast table,” Lyon quipped this week.
And what’s not to like? Besides Lyon having considerably more leisure time, the new year has brought him a raft of honors for his long, varied career in the golf business.
In the course of just 24 hours last week, for instance, the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame board voted to give Lyon a Lifetime Achievement Award, then he received his national USGA Green Section Award, which is presented annually to a person who contributes significantly to golf through work with turfgrass.
If that wasn’t enough, on March 17 at Lakewood Country Club, Lyon will be given the Ike Grainger Award for 25 years of volunteer work on USGA committees. Lyon currently serves on the USGA Green Section Committee and has previously worked on the Public Golf Committee.
“It’s been exciting for me,” Lyon said in a phone interview this week. “It’s very kind of people to acknowledge things I’ve done in the profession and the game. You don’t aim to receive awards like this. I just wanted to contribute to the game.”
And Lyon has done so on many levels, which is why CGA executive director Ed Mate noted that if there was a Mount Rushmore for golf administrators in Colorado, Lyon would be on it.
In 1989, he was national president of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, becoming the first person in that position who represented municipal golf facilities. Lyon also served as president of the CGA in 2002-03, was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2005, and served as general chairman of the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship when it was held at Aurora’s Murphy Creek Golf Course in 2008. In addition, Lyon has been president of the Rocky Mountain Golf Course Superintendents Association and the Rocky Mountain Regional Turfgrass Association.
As for receiving the national USGA Green Section Award last week in Orlando, Fla., Lyon called it “certainly one of the highlights of my career. I’ve had a close relationship with and affinity for the USGA, so it meant a lot to receive the award from them and to know that people I care about were instrumental in getting me the award. They only give one of these each year, and it’s been around a long time and is considered prestigious.”
In fact, this was exactly the 50th time the USGA Green Section Award has been presented. The only previous winner of the honor whose primary body of work came in Colorado was James Haines (1968), a superintendent at Denver Country Club for 40 years.
It was Lyon’s wide variety of experience that made him a unique candidate for the Green Section Award. After all, not many people can say they have been all of the following — a course superintendent who graduated into city golf management, president of the national GCSAA, president of a state golf association, and a general chairman of a USGA championship. Plus, for the last 37-plus years of his career, Lyon proudly carried the banner for public golf.
Lyon, who specialized in turf management in receiving a horticulture degree from Colorado State University, started working in the golf business in 1969 at Boulder Country Club and, following some time in the Army, became an assistant superintendent at HeatherRidge in 1972. He was hired as the superintendent at Aurora Hills in 1973, starting a 37½-year association with the city of Aurora.
When Lyon receives his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame on June 12 at Denver Country Club, it will mark his second straight year of being one of the Hall of Fame’s honorees. Last year, Lyon was among the representatives of the 2009 Board of Directors for CommonGround Golf Course who were given a Distinguished Service Award.
