Sport: Women’s Polo

While the Argentines were coming to top form in Westbury, and while the Americans who were later to nose them out in a one goal victory were bickering on club piazzas about who should be on the team, some excited women played polo at the Westchester Biltmore. Canadian women and U. S. ones, they were getting ready to play the first match in an international series; after the second match the team that had scored the greatest total number of goals would be declared the winner. The U. S. women won the first match by a score of 5-2. Many spectators started to watch them but a cold wind blew most of them away; only a handful remained at the end to watch Dorothy Hunt-Hogan, the Canadian No. 1, topple off her pony and clamber back on again to finish the match.

Violet May, at No. 3, played better polo than the other Canadians; rode better and handled her stick almost as well as the Prince of Wales does. Mrs. James Hewlett, at No. 3, scored four of the five U. S. goals and played better than anyone else in the match. Neither of the Lanier girls, Sally & Becky, scored against Canada.

This was remarkable because Sally Lanier and her sister were playing the forward positions. They are both splendid horsewomen; Sally, despite the fact that it was only a few years ago that she left Rosemary Hall, is experienced in polo while her sister, more nearly a novice, was the more eager to display her speed & brilliance. Charles B. Lanier, their father, the son of Poet Sidney Lanier, is the Secretary and Treasurer of the Review of Reviews; the Laniers live in Greenwich, Conn. The Lanier girls began to ride horses as soon as they could walk; pictures of them jumping at the Stamford Show, standing beside their ponies at Westchester, watching the hunters at Piping Rock, began many years ago to appear in Rider and Driver, Town and Country, and the chatter supplements of Manhattan newsrags. Sally, two years younger than Becky, began to play polo before her sister, when organized polo for women was an absurd novelty. Becky started to play two years ago; both are aware that women can never be as good at the game as men but that doesn’t prevent them from getting enormously excited about it.

The thing that polo demands most of all, of course, is strength. Women can handle their ponies as well but they cannot ever hope to get the distance that even mediocre male players expect. In golf, 50 yards on a drive can be cancelled by five feet on the green; not so in polo. Yet, there have been great women players. Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock, who must now be nearly 65, taught Winston Guest, as well as her own sons, the game; it would be difficult to say on how many summer mornings this superb lady has been seen on her field in Westbury, telling a crowd of youngsters what was wrong with their play. That field has been the nursery and Mrs. Hitchcock the nurse of International Polo.