Drive up Grand Hills Drive any weekend morning and you will see it: a scorpion, rendered in gold and black, on a sign that used to say Rio Secco. Most of your neighbors still stumble over the new name. It is pronounced SIR-ket, and if you ask three different people at the mailbox how to say it, you will get three different answers.
That confusion is understandable. What is less understood, even among people who have played this course for twenty years, is what the name change actually represents. The scorpion is cosmetic. The real story is who is running your golf course now, and that operator's whole business model is different from the one it replaced.
What changed, and when
The course at 2851 Grand Hills Drive opened in 1997, designed by Rees Jones for guests of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. The Rio was purchased by Harrah's Entertainment, later Caesars Entertainment, in 1998, and the golf club rode along as a hotel amenity for nearly two decades. When Caesars spun off its non-gaming real estate into VICI Properties in 2017, the course went with it, still called Rio Secco, still tied to a casino-hospitality business.
That changed in October 2022, when VICI expanded its partnership with Cabot through a management contract covering four of its golf courses, including this one. Cabot took over day-to-day operations while VICI kept ownership of the land and the golf assets. Three years later, Cabot pulled the rebrand trigger. The course closed for renovations and reopened as Serket on September 20, 2025, according to Cabot's own announcement at the time.
So the sign changed almost a year ago now. The ownership did not move. What moved was the operator, and that operator answers to a completely different set of incentives than the last one did.
The part that actually matters: who sets the price
Cabot is not a casino company that happens to own a few golf courses. It is a golf-first developer whose entire portfolio reads like a bucket list: Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Cabot Saint Lucia, Cabot Highlands in Scotland, Cabot Bordeaux in France, Lofoten Links in Norway. In the United States, its Cabot-Managed Properties division runs Chariot Run in Indiana, Grand Bear in Mississippi, and now Cascata in Boulder City alongside Serket. Cabot CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar described the local move this way when the rebrand launched:
"The transformation to Serket melds the course's natural splendor with a refreshed identity that captures both the spirit of the game and the surrounding Mojave Desert."
Marketing language aside, the practical shift is this: for two decades, tee time pricing at Rio Secco moved in step with Rio hotel occupancy and Caesars' comped-play system. A round here was often a byproduct of a casino stay. Cabot runs a different playbook. It markets its courses as destinations in their own right, sells them on their design pedigree, and prices them dynamically, meaning rates climb the closer you get to your tee time. A GolfPass review published in September 2025, right around the reopening, put high-season green fees at $225 and up for Serket and $450 and up for its sister course Cascata, with multi-course "Double Down" packages running from $525 in summer up to $675 in fall. That is a different pricing conversation than the one your neighbors were having with Caesars in 2015.
Here is the shift in plain terms:
| Under Caesars (1998 to 2017) | Under Cabot as Serket (2022 to present) | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary identity | Hotel golf amenity for Rio guests | Standalone destination course |
| Pricing | Tied to hotel occupancy and comps | Dynamic, rises closer to play date |
| Sister-course marketing | Limited | Actively packaged with Cascata |
| Ownership | Caesars, then VICI after 2017 spinoff | VICI Properties (unchanged since 2017) |
The name is what you notice on the drive-by. The pricing model and the marketing posture are what actually change your experience of booking a round here, and that shift happened three years before the sign did.
What did not move
For all the rebranding, the things that made this course worth playing in the first place are still exactly where you left them.
- The Rees Jones routing is untouched: six holes through steep canyons, six on a plateau overlooking the Strip, six through a broad desert wash, the same three-part structure that has defined the course since 1997.
- The Butch Harmon School of Golf still operates on site. Harmon coached Tiger Woods through his dominant stretch, and that instruction program did not change hands, change location, or change name.
- Janelas Restaurant & Bar is still open to the public for breakfast and lunch, still the room where regulars end up after eighteen holes.
- The course still hosts the annual Tiger Woods Jam and the VegasGolfer Pro Showdown, the tournament pedigree that gave Rio Secco its reputation in the first place.
If you played here in 2019 and walked the same fairways this spring, you would recognize almost everything except the logo on your scorecard.
The honest part
The rebrand has not been a flawless landing. Golf Digest's Best in State rankings for Nevada show the course slipping from 15th in the 2023-'24 cycle to 16th in 2025-'26, a small movement but a real one. Reviews from the first weeks after the September 2025 reopening described fairways that were more rough than fairway, the result of reseeding done during the closure. One GolfPass reviewer who played on the course's first day under the new name called the scenery and routing as good as ever, but flagged the turf as unfinished business.
Almost a year out from the reopening, that is worth knowing if you are deciding whether to bring an out-of-town guest here this fall. The bones are the same course that earned its reputation. The grass had some catching up to do, and if you have not played since last September, it is worth checking recent conditions before you book a foursome for a client or a father-in-law who expects the version of this course that made it famous.
A few practical notes if you are planning a fall round:
- Book earlier rather than later. Dynamic pricing here means rates climb as the date approaches, so a tee time booked a month out will typically cost less than one booked the week of.
- Consider a weekday round. Weekend demand at a rebranded, freshly marketed course tends to run hot in the first year.
- If you are new to lessons, the Butch Harmon School's booking calendar runs independently of tee times, so plan that separately.
- Janelas is worth a stop even on a non-golf Saturday. It keeps the same breakfast and lunch hours it always has, minus a ninety-minute wait you would find on the Strip.
The rest of the neighborhood did not blink
While the golf course reinvented its branding, the infrastructure around it kept doing exactly what it has always done. The paved Seven Hills Trail loop still runs 2.6 miles through Puccini Park, connecting the neighborhood's cluster of parks with a gentle grade that most residents finish in under an hour, dogs welcome on leash the whole way. For anyone who wants more elevation, Black Mountain Trail sits close by, a tougher ridgeline hike with real scrambling near the summit and views across the entire valley, a stark contrast to the flat, shaded community loop.
The dining scene has kept its own rhythm too. The Stove NV still handles the all-day brunch and cheeky cocktail crowd. Black Mountain Grill still runs 24 hours for the late-night burger fix. Blume still holds down date night with its French-Italian menu. Cubanidad 1885 still serves the empanadas and Cuban sandwiches that made it a neighborhood favorite, and Horizon Marketplace still anchors the everyday errands with its grocery store, bank, and fitness center.
None of that is new. That is the point. The parks and the trail were here before the sign changed and will be here regardless of which hospitality group is running the clubhouse a decade from now. The steady infrastructure of Seven Hills is what makes it feel like Seven Hills, and the Serket rebrand is a useful reminder of how much of that steady infrastructure has quietly stayed the course while the golf operation around it went through a real business change dressed up as a logo refresh.
If you are curious how changes like this ripple into resale value down the line, or you just want a local ear who tracks this kind of thing before it shows up on a listing sheet, Jennifer Belcastro has spent years watching Seven Hills up close. Let's Connect.
