By Alex Webbe
Spring polo will rear its head in Wellington with the La Martina Invitational at the Grand Champions Polo Club as four teams compete in the 16-18 goal competition.
“There are a bunch of players who make Wellington their home.” Said club president Melissa Ganzi, “and we decided last year that we were going to create some fun, competitive polo in the spring.”
In its second season, the Grand Champions Polo Club has established a home base on its two fields and has access to a number of other participating fields for competition for the series of spring tournaments.
Grand Champions has established a pro pool that form rotating teams combinations with various patrons dropping in and out from tournament to tournament.
“It’s great fun,” said Newport’s Gene Goldstein. “We play good competitive polo, but we have a lot of fun doing it,” he added.
“We have gathered a group of friends who love the game and enjoy playing polo and socializing with one another,” said Melissa Ganzi. “We like to think that there’s more to polo than the games on the field,” she said, “we like to schedule social events like Asados and dinners together at various Palm Beach restaurants during the tournaments.”
The 2008 spring season will open with four teams competing in the Spring Invitational with action scheduled to begin on Friday at 10am with a match between Audi Polo (Melissa Ganzi, J. J. Celis, Brandon Phillips and Juan Bollini) against Newport Polo (Sunny Hale, Tommy Biddle, Carlucho Arellano and Gene Goldstein). The second match of the game is a 5pm contest between Pony Express (Bob Daniels, Nick Roldan, John Gobin and Brad Scherer) and GTP Polo (Marc Ganzi, Hector Galindo, Kris Kampsen and Diego Arellano).
The consolation round will be played on Sunday, May 11at 10 am. The finals will pit Friday’s winners against one another at 5 pm.