“Right now I’m really focused on my art
work,” Phipps said, standing on the green
recently with a putter in his hands and
three golf balls in his pocket. “I’ll come
back to it a little more when I have the
time, but I love this. I come out and putt a
little bit, chip a little bit. It definitely helps
clear your head.”
Phipps’ father, Hubert Phipps, died in
1969 when his son was 12. He was a mem-
ber of the Phipps family that partnered
with industrialist Andrew Carnegie in the
steel-making business in Pittsburgh.
The younger Phipps and his sister, Me-
lissa, grew up in the Virginia horse country
at Rockburn Farm in Marshall, and their
father raised Thoroughbred racehorses
and purebred cattle. The elder Phipps also
owned the Fauquier Democrat, a still pop-
ular weekly newspaper now known as the
Fauquier Times, in the county seat in War-
renton, some 15 miles from their farm.
After his father’s death, young Hubert
went to live with an uncle in Palm Beach,
then attended Deerfield Academy in Mas-
sachusetts, where he learned to fly. He’d
heard that a few years earlier, another
student at the prep school had been given
permission to take flying lessons in lieu
of playing a mandatory sport. So Phipps
broached the same idea and was allowed
to take off.
These days, he has his own helicopter,
a Eurocopter EC 120. It’s a two-seater he
30
keeps in Winchester, with a landing area
on the farm right next to his art studio on
what looks to be the perfect site for yet an-
other grass tee. He has 1,200 hours of flight
time on the copter, and occasionally flies it
down to South Florida (about seven hours,
with two stops to refuel) where he often
stays with several cousins in the area.
In addition to his passion for flying,
Phipps had always enjoyed drawing and
painting, and briefly enrolled at the San
Francisco Art Institute before getting
involved in another of his adrenaline-in-
ducing pursuits—motocross. Then, af-
ter attending his first Daytona 500 race,
he literally decided to switch gears and
get into auto racing, enrolling in driving
school for potential competitors.
Out on the racetrack, he won a Sports Car
Club of America (SCCA) Formula Atlantic
national championship,, and once teamed
with then 19-year-old Michael Andretti in
the Formula Atlantic series of open cockpit
racing. It’s a circuit that included races in
New Zealand and Australia, and among its
alums are legendary racing luminaries Gilles
Villeneuve, Bobby Rahal and Danica Patrick.
“I’ve always been enamored with ma-
chines,” Phipps said. “And I had a great life
as a racecar driver, won a lot of races.”
And then came the crash.
It happened in a training run at the
Sears Point track in Napa, Calif., in 1983. A
driver in front of him had spun out on the
V IRGINIA G OLFER | S EPTEMBER/ O CTOBER 2017
downside of a hill, out of view of Phipps’
car whooshing along at 120 mph over a
blind rise.
“I came over the hill and hit his car,”
Phipps said. “When I looked down, my
feet were six inches closer to my kneecap.
At first, I thought my shoes had just come
apart and slid up my shins. I was trapped
in the car. It took them an hour and a half
to get me out of the car. I broke the heels,
ankles and tibias and had a broken arm. I
was out for six months, got back in the car
and won again. But I wasn’t getting much
traction in finding the sponsors I needed,
so I decided to give it up in 1985.”
Phipps was a real estate broker in South
Florida for a number of years and also
worked on his art, eventually switching
from painting and illustrating to sculp-
ture. He moved from Florida back to Vir-
ginia six years ago, when he also became
interested in golf again, taking lessons
with highly-regarded instructor Mark
Guttenberg. Guttenberg and his wife, Les-
vsga.org
A serious accident during a training run cut Hubert
Phipps’ career as a racecar driver short. Ever
enamored with machines, though, Phipps gets his
thrills by flying helicopters.