Polo 2: Polo in the U. S.
American newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett saw a polo match while visiting England in 1875 and he brought equipment back to the United States. He also had a boxcar load of cow ponies shipped from Texas to New York and he persuaded some friends to try the new sport with him at Dickel's Riding Academy during the winter.
They formed the Westchester Polo Club and played the first outdoor match at the Jerome Park racetrack on May 13, 1876. The Meadowbrook Club, organized in 1879, played at the Mineola fairgrounds on Long Island.
In 1890, seven U. S. clubs founded the Polo Association, now known as the U. S. Polo Association (USPA). H. L. Herbert, the first chairman of the association, developed the handicapping system still in use today, with minor modifications.
Players are rated from 0 goals, for a beginner, to 10 goals, for an outstanding player. The system is used to equalize play in many leagues and tournaments. In a 20-goal tournament, for example, the handicaps of a team's four player cannot add up to more than 20. Thus, if a team has two 10-goal players, the other two players have to be beginners with 0-goal ratings.
Under the leadership of Harry Payne Whitney, polo became a high-speed sport in the United States in the early 20th century. English teams generally used short passes to work the ball slowly toward the opposition's goal, but Whitney and his teammates ran the equivalent of basketball's fast break, sending long passes downfield to riders galloping at full speed.
Whitney, who owned a stable of Thoroughbreds, also developed the American polo pony by breeding quarter-horse stallions with Thoroughbred mares.
The first U. S. Open tournament was held in 1904. The second didn't take place until 1910, but it's been an annual event since then, except for 1911, 1915, and the war years of 1917-18 and 1942-45. The USPA holds many other annual championship tournaments, but the Open is the most prestigious.
By about 1930, the USPA had 88 member clubs and 2,889 players. Part of that growth had come with polo's expansion along the East Coast, as well as into Texas, California, and other areas in the west, but a great deal was due to the involvement of the U. S. Army, which encouraged its cavalry officers to play polo. Nearly half of the playing members were in the military.
As the Great Depression wore on, though, USPA civilian membership declined sharply. After World War II, the Army dropped out of the sport because mechanized armor had replaced the horse cavalry. Although the USPA had 56 member clubs in 1950, there were only 614 playing members.
The sport began to make a comeback during the 1960s, particularly in the Midwest. The Oak Brook Club of Chicago replaced Meadow Brook at the top polo club in the country. Detroit, Milwaukee, and Tulsa also fielded outstanding teams that won a number of U. S. Open championships.
In 1967, the USPA moved its headquarters from New York City to Oak Brook. The Polo Training Foundation was established that year to help develop young players.
Indoor polo, an American invention, and collegiate polo both attracted more players and followers in the 1960s and through the 1970s. By 1980, there were 134 clubs and nearly 1,400 players in the USPA. That has increased to more than 275 clubs and more than 3,500 player members.