The Cordillera Cup is an annual Ryder Cup-style match between Team Hill and Team Northington. Team Hill is captained by David Hill and Team Northington is captained by Mac Northington. These gentlemen have been close friends since their college days at the University of Texas and as you can imagine, they’ve played a lot of golf together over the years. After college and later in their careers, Mac and David partnered together to develop Cordillera Ranch. In 2007, the Cordillera Cup was born and built on a foundation of competition and camaraderie with a little trash talking mixed-in for good measure.
By:
Corey Roberson, Director of Golf
Adding to the culture of the event, both of David’s sons, Charlie and Chris, play for Team Hill and are scratch golfers. Mac’s sons and sons-in-law have also participated on his team over the years but you’d have to look a little further down the handicap roster to find them … one may assume they took Mac’s handicapping class. While this event’s foundation is rooted in the friendly rivalry between Mac and David, the whole membership is invited to engage as well. The first time a new member plays, he’ll get assigned to a team based on how the handicaps fall. From there, that person stays on that team.
We’ve made a few changes to the event over the years by having Mac and David play each other and going from a shotgun start to tee times, but the overall structure hasn’t wavered. We always have a pairings party on the Friday before where matches are revealed, and the captains speak. That Saturday, two 9-hole matches are played — best ball on the front nine and alternate shot on the back nine … in proper golf terms, that’s fourball and foursomes. On Sunday, the field plays a singles match. Each match is scored using the following system: 1 point if you win, ½ a point if you tie, and 0 points if you lose. Over the years, there’s been some tight matches played and as you can imagine, some that weren’t very close.
In the early years, Team Northington dominated by winning eight Cordillera Cups in a row. Since then, the matches have been pretty tight with Team Hill (pictured above) winning five of the last nine years — they even had a three-in-a-row stretch from 2020 to 2022. Heading into the 2024 matches, Team Hill is trying to notch another victory to even the tables since Team Northington’s flag has been flying in the Champions Gallery for the last 11 months.
The 2024 Cordillera Cup will be played October 12-13.
Corey Roberson is the Director of Golf at The Clubs of Cordillera Ranch. He can be reached at croberson@cordilleraranch.com and 830.336.4653.
