 After turning 50, Butler was a regular competitor in the PGA Seniors Championship.He was runner-up four times, in 1982, 1984, 1986 and 1989, losing in a four-man sudden-death playoff in 1982, just two months after his 50th birthday.He was one of the founders of the European Seniors Tour and finished fourth on the Order of Merit in its 1992 debut season, even though, at sixty, he was ten years past the minimum age.