Diane Butler is obsessed with golf. The CEO of Butler Burgher Group has played in eight LPGA Kraft-Nabisco Pro-Am events in Palm Springs, Calif., pairing up with the likes of Annika Sörenstam and Alice Cooper. She has “an insane” amount of golf memorabilia in her home, and regularly hits the links with her good friend and World Golf Hall of Fame member Kathy Whitworth. (Whitworth, who lives in Flower Mound, has won 88 tournaments—a record for both the LPGA Tour and the PGA Tour.)
So when boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard was in Dallas earlier this year for the 25th anniversary of Fight Night, and wanted to go out and play a round of golf, Linda McMahon, president of The Real Estate Council, knew who to call. Butler was happy to oblige. “It was a blast,” she says.
What is it about golf that has her so hooked? “You can’t master it,” she says.
That fierce drive to become the best has revealed itself in Butler’s real estate career, too. Since re-launching Butler Burgher Group in 2009, she has grown the company to become one of the top 10 valuation firms in the United States, with 16 offices and 180 employees.
Growing up in Mississippi, Butler was crazy about sports, and likely could have played college basketball if she hadn’t had so many knee injuries. Her father was an entrepreneur who had a large farming operation. (“He grew rice for Budweiser—how random is that?” Butler says.) He also was involved with a couple of farming-related ventures with Dallas’ Hunt family. That’s what led Butler to the Lone Star State in 1982.
