Sport: Polo & Parties

Polo’s brightest season started last June when the U. S. beat England at Hurlingham. It continued at Berlin, where Argentina won the Olympic tournament, in which no U. S. team was entered. Last week, Polo moved to Long Island for the U. S. Open Championship. This year the Open has an extra significance: the winner will represent the U. S. against Argentina in the year’s second major international series, the Cup of the Americas, starting at Meadow Brook Sept. 19. In last week’s first-round matches, all played the same afternoon on three fields within easy motoring distance of each other in Long Island’s Nassau County, the Hurricanes beat Old Westbury, 11-to-6; Texas nosed out Roslyn, 10-to-9; and Greentree, defending champions, rode rings around Aurora, 17-to-8.

The Open Polo Championship is a misnomer. If the popularity of a game were measured by the number of people who would like to play it, polo might be the U. S. national pastime. As it is, a generous estimate would put the total number of U. S. poloists at 5,000. Of the 5,000— because at least half the responsibility in polo is the pony’s, and a good string, properly equipped, costs $25,000—all but some 500 play a variety of polo which compares to what was going on on Long Island last week as one-o’-cat compares to the World Series. Poloists who belong to clubs which belong to the U. S. Polo Association receive handicaps of from zero to ten goals in ratio to their ability. To enter the Open, a team’s four members must have a total handicap of 21 goals or better. In the whole world, only that minute corner of Long Island bounded on the north by the Sound, on the east by Jericho, on the south by Westbury and on the west by Port Washington has ever been able to furnish seven such teams at the same time.

Greentree, with the only 10-goal poloist in U. S. ranking, Tommy Hitchcock, at No. 3, and England’s Gerald Balding, 9 goals, at No. 2, is named for the Manhasset estate of John Hay Whitney. He is the team’s backer, and, although his handicap is only 5, its Back. Minuscule Pete Bostwick plays No. 1. On paper the strongest team in the tournament (31 goals) is Templeton, which had a first-round bye. It includes three of the four players who beat England at Hurlingham in June—Winston Guest at Back, Stewart Iglehart at No. 3, Michael Phipps at No. 1. The only change—James Mills, onetime Yale captain, for Eric Pedley— should not greatly upset the combination.

What polo means to the rest of the world is in reverse ratio to its importance in that enameled frieze of polite 20th Century pleasure that constitutes September social life on Long Island. Deserted through muggy August days while the fog horns mooed unhappily along the Sound, the big Georgian houses along the North Shore were last week filled again, lighted for parties through cool evenings as their owners returned from Newport, Saratoga, Maine and Europe.

At Glen Cove last week arrived Grain Broker Herbert L. Bodman on his yacht. He was returning from a three-week, six-horse cavalcade on which, followed by chauffeur & groom with Ford trailer containing stove, icebox and 200-lb. of oats, Broker Bodman, his wife, their son & daughter and two friends had ridden horseback 360 miles to Rutland, Vt.

At dinner parties people quoted the reply of grizzled Manuel Andrada, 45-year old veteran of the Argentine team—which was last week pleasantly engaged in scouting the U. S. teams each afternoon, being lionized each evening—when someone asked what he thought of 118-lb. Pete Bostwick. Said Poloist Andrada: “Leetle man, beeg bump.”