You have driven past the entrance on Grand Hills Drive more times than you can count, on the way to Eastern Avenue or just cutting through on a Saturday morning. The sign used to say Rio Secco. Now it says Serket, with a scorpion where the old script logo used to sit, and if you are like most of your neighbors you have driven past it twice before deciding whether to say the new name out loud. It is pronounced SIR-ket. The course is the same course. The company running it is not.
That distinction matters more than the logo does. Rio Secco has changed hands and changed operators before, and each time the shift showed up in small, practical ways long before anyone noticed the branding. This time is no different, except now you can actually see the difference from the road.
The Sign Has Changed Before, Just Not Like This
Rees Jones designed the course in 1997 for the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, carving eighteen holes through the Black Mountain foothills that would eventually become the spine of the Seven Hills master plan. Harrah's Entertainment bought the Rio the following year, which meant the golf course spent two decades as a casino amenity, the kind of asset that exists to keep hotel guests occupied between shows and gaming tables. When Caesars spun off its non-gaming real estate in 2017, the course went with it into a new entity called VICI Properties, and Jones came back that year to rebuild greens and bunkers and expand the practice facility.
None of that changed what golfers actually experienced on the ground. The routing stayed the routing. What changed in 2022 was who ran the day to day operation. VICI signed a twenty year management agreement handing the course over to Cabot, a developer better known for building destination golf resorts like Cabot Cape Breton and Cabot Saint Lucia than for running a casino's back nine. That is the quiet part of this story that the new scorpion logo is standing in front of. For the first time since 1997, the course at the center of Seven Hills is being run by an operator whose entire business model is built around treating a golf course as a destination brand, not a hotel perk.
Why Serket, and Why Now
The rebrand itself came together fast and stayed quiet until it didn't. According to Las Vegas Magazine, the course sat on a rebranding hiatus for several months before reopening on September 20, 2025 under the new name. Cabot's own account of how the name was chosen is more personal than a typical corporate rebrand. Jeff Krohn, executive vice president of Cabot-Managed Properties, told Golf Travel Wire that the company ran an internal naming competition rather than hiring an outside branding firm.
"We had two employees actually come up with the name Serket and the scorpion logo is unbelievable. Having the new logo is huge."
Serket, in Egyptian mythology, is the goddess of protection and healing, traditionally depicted with a scorpion on her crown, credited with guarding against venomous stings. For a course carved into the Mojave Desert foothills above Henderson, the symbolism is on the nose in a way that seems to have been the point rather than an accident. Cabot CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar framed it as an identity meant to match the terrain rather than replace it, and the company's stated goal was to give a course that already had accolades a name that actually sounds like the desert it sits in.
What Actually Stayed the Same
If you golf here or plan to, the parts of your experience that predate the rebrand are still standing.
- The Rees Jones routing is untouched: six holes through steep canyons, six across an elevated plateau with Strip views, six through a broader desert mountain range, still built to the original 1997 design.
- The Butch Harmon School of Golf is still on site. Harmon, Tiger Woods's former swing coach, has taught out of this location since it opened and continues to work with touring professionals.
- Janelas Restaurant & Bar has not gone anywhere. It still runs breakfast and lunch service open to the public, salads and burgers and the kind of room where a Saturday morning crowd doesn't have to fight a ninety minute wait the way they might closer to the Strip.
- The tournament calendar carried over too. The course still hosts the annual Tiger Woods Jam charity event along with the VegasGolfer Pro Showdown, the same events that put this course on the map for golfers who never set foot in Seven Hills.
That continuity is not an accident. It is the part of the operator relationship that Cabot inherited rather than invented, and it is also the part least likely to change no matter who is running the pro shop counter a decade from now.
The Part That Will Actually Change Your Saturday
Here is where the operator swap shows up in ways that matter more than a logo. A casino owned amenity prices its tee times around hotel occupancy and comped play. A destination golf operator prices around demand for the golf trip itself, and Cabot has built its entire portfolio, including Chariot Run in Indiana and Grand Bear in Mississippi alongside Serket and its sister course Cascata in Boulder City, around exactly that model.
GolfPass, reviewing both courses after the rebrand, put real numbers on what that shift looks like at the top of the market. High season green fees run $225 and up at Serket and $450 and up at Cascata, with the two courses packaged together as "Double Down" trip options starting around $525 in summer and $675 in fall. That is destination pricing, built for a golfer flying in for a trip rather than a resident squeezing in a Tuesday round between errands. The practical read for Seven Hills is straightforward: rates now move with demand rather than with whatever the hotel's occupancy report says that week, and shoulder season and weekday play are where residents will find the better numbers relative to the marketed peak rate.
The branding investment followed the same destination logic. New signage, new tee markers, new scorecards, and a merchandise line that leans fully into the scorpion theme, down to a house made Serket Sauce for the clubhouse menu and a Serket Margarita behind the bar. Krohn told Golf Travel Wire the team is having fun with the logo precisely because it gives the marketing something sharper to work with than a Spanish phrase most out of town visitors couldn't pronounce anyway.
What This Is Actually Worth Noticing
The rebrand is a good excuse to remember what else sits within a five minute walk of most Seven Hills front doors, because none of it changed when the sign did. Sonata Park still anchors the neighborhood with its tennis courts and soccer field. Puccini Park still handles the smaller pickup games. The walking loop that threads through the community still gets used at sunrise by the same neighbors who will now need a beat to remember whether they are meeting for a round at Serket or still calling it Rio Secco out of habit.
That is the actual thesis worth carrying past the scorpion logo. A golf course is only as good as the outfit maintaining the turf, staffing the counter, and setting the price, and for the first time in nearly three decades, the answer to who is doing that job has genuinely changed. The rebrand is the visible part. The twenty year Cabot agreement is the part that will actually shape what tee times look like, what the clubhouse menu tastes like, and whether Seven Hills residents keep treating the course the way they always have, as the thing in the middle of the neighborhood rather than the thing the neighborhood is named after.
If you have been in Seven Hills long enough to remember when this course only had one name, and you are curious what your home has done while the golf course was busy rebranding itself, Jason Griggs Real Estate will run a free, no pressure valuation whenever you're ready to look.
