Rio Rico Country Club

About the course

Understand the course before making an access claim.

Rio Rico Golf Club and Tubac Resort named top hidden gems in Arizona!The automobile club of Arizona, in its recent monthly magazine, Highroads, was named the top hidden gems in Arizona. Rio Rico was named #1 and Tubac was rated #2. The article describes Rio Rico with “fabulous foothills with mountain backdrops” and one of Robert Trent Jones signature golf courses. Rio Rico’s management was recently changed, with LMT Management taking over in late fall. Numerous changes are being made, with the goal of re-establishing Rio Rico as the finest championship course in southern Arizona. In recognition of this great honor, Rio Rico will be offering a special for all Golf Now members though the month of January. Any GolfNow reservations will include a free lunch and fountain drink. GolfNow players will be able to order any item off the menu including our famous 1/3 pound Rio Rico burger. This offer will continue until the end of the month.Robert Trent Jones did not invent golf course architecture, it only seems that way. In a career that spanned nearly 70 years, Jones built or rebuilt some 400 courses in 45 states in the U.S. and 35 countries worldwide, with more than three dozen of them having played host to national or international championships. Still, the numbers tell only part of the story.Jones made an art form of heroic architecture, institutionalizing the risk-reward shot in modern courses. With his often quoted philosophy to make every hole a hard par but an easy bogey, he also had a profound impact on tournament golf. Jones built or remodeled some of the most muscular courses the pros have ever faced, including Firestone, Hazeltine, Spyglass hill, Baltusrol and Oak Hill. In his early years Jones’ designs often created criticism as too severe, and the complaints from the pros reached a crescendo when he remodeled Oakland Hills for the 1951 U.S. Open. When a victorious Ben Hogan boasted of having brought that “monster to its knees” and Herbert Warren Wind followed with a complimentary and widely read-article in The New Yorker Magazine, Jones was introduced to a mass audience and the cult of the golf course architect was born.Jones was born in Ince, England, in 1906, and he immigrated with his parents to Rochester, N.Y., three years later. He was a scratch golfer by his early teens but an ulcer sidelined him from tournament competition. A high school dropout,