“If you work for the Top 50, shouldn’t you be able to count to 50?”
That snipe, from a cowled friar in Hayward, Calif., points out that the Top 50 on TV addendum to my last post reads “Nothing this week” — when, in fact, the Frys.com Open is being held at the CordeValle Resort Golf CLub, No. 49.
“Furthermore,” the monk mutters, “some nimrod hasn’t been taught how to use the SHIFT key on his Remington. Not to get on his case, but ‘upper’ is for the first letter of proper nouns, and ‘lower’ is for the alphabetical rug rats that follow.”
CordeValle: Top-10 resort, Top-50 golf course. (John Garrity)
I could pen an extended rebuttal to Monastery Man’s snide, albeit artfully-phrased, “gotcha.” But that’s not how we do things at the Top 50. CordeValle is, indeed, No. 49. That’s a rung above the 50th-ranking the northern-California resort achieved back in June, when SI senior writer Gary Van Sickle and I played it on our way to flights from San Jose International Airport.
By the end of a three-birdie round at CordeValle, I was a confirmed 49er. The turfed expanse of the RTJ Jr. tournament track wanders through a valley dominated by exquisite, oak-dappled foothills, providing a golden backdrop for this week’s Golf Channel cameras. The clubhouse and hotel are shaded by ancient sycamores and swathed in trellised roses. If wine-country ambiance is your cup of tea, CordeValle can’t be beat. Or rather, it can be beat by only seven other golf resorts. (CordeValle is No. 8 on my World Golf Resorts list, which will appear here in November.*)
*Contingent upon completion of certain infrastructure projects at our Kansas City headquarters.
As for the charge by our Thomas Merton wannabe that we can’t type, I will patiently explain that CordeValle — pronounced “COR-de-vol” — is spelled with a capital V. (See my privately-published monograph, “What’s with the E in FedEx?”) The documentation for the L in “CLub” seems to have been misplaced, but I’ve got someone looking into it.
There is no listing for Hayward, by the way, in Michelin’s Guide to North American Monasteries.
John Garrity's Top 50 