The Railwood Golf Club is bustling these days, thanks to a spell of mild weather, and on weekends you can play 18 holes with a cart for only $25. Justin Smith wanted it this way. He didn't want to gouge the working man who couldn't take a Monday off to hit golf balls. Smith would prefer, though, that you didn't know he's the owner of this golf course nestled in the rolling hills of Central Missouri.

His name is not on the voicemail, or the website, and that seems typical. Smith is 6-foot-4 and 285 pounds, and one of the most important players on the San Francisco 49ers' vaunted defense, but he prefers to remain in the background. When his teammates are getting sacks, it means Smith is doing his job. Smith has a goal. When he's finished with football, he'd like to be able to go to the grocery store without anyone recognizing him.

"He's just a simple guy," said Blair Thompson, a childhood friend. "He grew up that way."

Before Smith and his wife, Kerri, had kids, they used to go back to the course a lot during the offseason. He bought his wife a chainsaw. She'd cut the trees; he'd mow the greens.

There is nothing exclusive or pretentious about Railwood. It exists for everybody in the tiny town of Holts Summit, Mo., and nearby Jefferson City. In the clubhouse, they serve Budweiser and a handful of one-syllable American beers. (Smith, by the way, has an Anheuser-Busch tattoo on his left bicep.) "He gives me trouble because I like wine," said his father, Dave. "He's like, 'Geez, Dad.'"

It is clear that the golf course means a lot to Justin Smith. It was built on his granddad's old farmland. His dad grew up there. When the course was in financial trouble 10 years ago, it was Smith who came in and bought it from some local investors. On the 17th green, the highest point, you can see the Missouri River and Jefferson City, a town of 43,000 where all of this started for a rancher's kid who didn't grow up with cable TV. He didn't have time for it.

Someday, Smith tells his friends, his little boys will know about this land, and this community. Smith might not have known this when he bought it, but Railwood is more than just a golf course. It's a place where people connect. The high school teams hold banquets and fundraisers in the clubhouse. The locals drink coffee and eat breakfast there and talk about sports.

This week, the phone keeps ringing at Railwood. Folks wonder if there will be a Super Bowl party on Sunday.

"It's pretty exciting," said Kelly Whitaker, a longtime Railwood employee who, like others in the area, is friends with the Smith family. "Not too many times do you know somebody who's gotten to the Super Bowl.

"Justin has been a workaholic since at least the seventh grade. He deserves it because he's worked for it."

A man doesn't play football for most of his life without acquiring some kind of nickname, and there's one that has stuck with Smith since he entered the NFL in 2001: Cowboy. The boots, jeans and flannel shirts with the sleeves cut out were part of the reason he earned this moniker -- "He's not a fashionista," said former Bengals defensive coordinator Chuck Bresnahan -- but there is a deeper meaning to the name.

Smith, whose Southern accent comes through in about every other sentence, was trying to lug around feed buckets by the time he was 4 years old. His work ethic is his persona. Watch him in the weight room, or fighting off 600 pounds of double-teams, and you can't help but picture him baling hay.

He plays more than 90 percent of the snaps, which is stunning considering he's a big man and he's 33. Smith prefers it this way because he believes he can wear down his opponents. The significance of his presence on the field was underscored after Dec. 16, when he felt a pop in his triceps during a Sunday night game at New England. It was the first major injury of his career. Smith didn't play the next two games, but returned for the playoffs wearing a brace. Before the injury, young 49ers linebacker Aldon Smith had 19.5 sacks and was on pace to shatter the NFL's single-season record. In the four games since the injury, Aldon Smith has had zero sacks.

There is an iconic photo from the 2011 season that encapsulates Justin Smith. The 49ers are facing the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs. It's the fourth quarter, third-and-17. Smith is bull-rushing Jermon Bushrod -- a Pro Bowl left tackle -- and he pushes Bushrod into Drew Brees. Smith has his arm wrapped around Bushrod, but his eyes are fixed on Brees, and he has one mitt on the quarterback. Blood is trickling down Smith's elbow. Brees is just about to throw an incomplete pass, and all three of them are about to tumble to the ground.

Smith played all 80 defensive snaps in that game, plus a few on offense in a 36-32 San Francisco victory.

"It was kind of the epitome of that game and our season," 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio said. "Justin's an intense football player. He's a throwback, but he's a great player, too. I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that he's very talented. But when you put in the intangibles that an overachiever may have with that talent, that's the player you get."

Dave Smith wasn't there in New Orleans on Tuesday, but he assumes that Super Bowl media day was responsible for one of the most excruciating hours of his son's life. There are those who soak up the annual circus, dancing and wearing beads and chatting it up with rodeo clowns, and then there's Justin.

He sat on the stage, bored as a teenager watching C-SPAN. He was asked about CTE and football safety at least three times. He was asked to hold up a giant hashtag, and Smith promptly told the guy, "I don't have Twitter."

At one point in his one-hour session, someone asked Smith how it felt to go from a goat herder to the Super Bowl, and his face immediately lit up. It was Artrell Hawkins, a former teammate in Cincinnati who now works for Fox Sports Radio.

"It's pretty amazing seeing you sitting up there," Hawkins said to Smith from the crowd. "I was with you when you were a rookie, now you're a potential hero."

Smith laughed.

"Who would've thought it?" Smith said.

Teammates love him because they can count on him. In 12 years in the NFL, Smith has missed a total of three games -- those two in December, and one on Sept. 9, 2001. He wasn't hurt that day in what should've been his rookie debut. Smith, a first-round draft pick from the University of Missouri, had spent the entire summer in a contract holdout. When he finally arrived in September, his new teammates, naturally, were skeptical. They'd grown tired of the Justin Smith Watch.

"We expected a guy to come in that was going to be really naive," Hawkins said, "who didn't know how to work and was kind of a prima donna. We got a...