Forethoughts: A Flighted Event

Jon Rizzi

The “30,000-foot view” has become as tired a business cliché as “low-hanging fruit,” “move the needle” and “connect the dots.” Yet 30,000 feet above the earth is literally where this column originates, and in my view, there’s nothing tired or cliché about the business of traveling, especially to play golf.

I’m flying home from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, laptop on tray table, having reported this issue’s cover story on Rio Verde, a progressive, unpretentious private golf development northeast of Scottsdale. “Sustainability” not only defines Rio Verde’s approach to energy efficiency and resource management (it became the first in Arizona to receive the Audubon Green Community Award), but also the engagé, energetic lifestyle of its “active adult” membership—the majority of whom appear to be 10 years younger than their age.

Rio Verde’s two courses, which date to 1972, also seem to have been irrigated by the fountain of youth, thanks to a $6.5 million renovation by Tom Lehman and the agronomic efforts of Greenway Golf. However, despite winning the Arizona Women’s Golf Association’s GEM Award three years in a row and being voted the No. 1 “Private Golf Course” and “Active Adult Community” in Ranking Arizona Opinion Poll, Rio Verde remains as unheralded as the courses Bill Huffman unearths in “10 Hidden Arizona Golf Treasures.”

The Grand Canyon State, of course, abounds with courses worth playing and places worth staying. So does the state due east of it. But I’ll wager few golfers would include the town of Hobbs on their New Mexico must-play lists. It sits on bleak, uninspired terrain in the state’s southeastern corner, a 90-minute drive from Roswell and Carlsbad and the Texas cities of Midland, Lubbock and Odessa. 

Yet golfers from these locales—as well as those from Hobbs and its neighbors—are coming to Rockwind Community Links, Hobbs’ masterpiece of municipal golf that has galvanized both golfers and non-golfers alike. For perspective, Hobbs’ population of 36,000 compares to that of Brighton’s. But as celebrated as Riverdale Dunes is, how many people from Sterling or Cheyenne drive 90 minutes to play it?

Designed by Andy Staples, Rockwind Community Links occupies the site of the former Ocotillo Park Golf Course. It indeed links the entire community as a venue to play golf, picnic, drink and dine, get married, jog or gather with family and friends. It boasts one hell of a golf course to boot, replete with holes suggesting the influence of Seth Raynor as well as a spunky nine-hole par-3 layout that hosts a new chapter of The First Tee.

Ultimately, I suppose it’s clichéd to say that travel educates us in ways we would otherwise never know. But as one of my favorite writers, the peripatetic Evelyn Waugh, once wrote, “I think to be oversensitive about clichés is like being oversensitive about table manners.” And even though they rarely serve meals on domestic flights these days, I’m sure his observation would apply to tray-table etiquette too.

More “Forethoughts” from editor Jon Rizzi:

To The Good Life?

Fitting Your Top Club

Mastering the Month

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.