POLO AROUND THE WORLD OR SOME OF IT ?
Some replies Is there an answer HERE?
Comments from anonymous readers:
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“Three years ago Santa Barbara had eight 20 goal teams playing during the high goal season. Two years ago, there were eight teams in Santa Barbara but only four played at the club and the other four played their own private games. Last year there were four teams and this year? If sixteen teams can play 26 goal polo in Florida, money does not seem to be the problem. The Club needs to ask itself what has turned off the patrons?”
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“There are very few of us who actually play at Santa Barbara polo club. If the high goal comes down to 16 goal it becomes an affordable league for more sponsors to play, other than just the big money from Texas or Florida. It also becomes a league that someone could split a team. I normally don’t engage in these discussions, but I think Phil Heatley is doing a great job and this is a way to bring more local teams. We need to give him something to work with. I personally would be happy to put my deposit down if it becomes 16 goal. I also can confirm 4 other teams. That puts us at 7-8 teams confirmed. Does there need to be much more conversation about the matter. When we are so booked and there is a waiting list we can talk about raising the level to 20 or 22 like the rest of the world, but this is the situation for now and I think we should move on it.
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“Your problem starts at the top: the USPA! They are spending money on kids polo with zero return on the dollar. You think they would have learned a lesson from promoting college polo. For the most part, zero patrons or pros come out of the college players. The same thing will happen with youth polo. The USPA has zero interest to high goal. It’s only 5% of their membership. They said years ago they would put polo on television. How’s that working out? They said years ago they would grow the membership. How’s that working out? Please don’t include free youth membership and social membership. Most clubs can’t make it on their own in California or anywhere else. The sad fact is the USPA only cares about their own PR machine. $80mill in the bank and ZERO GROWTH! Congratulations.”
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“Hope you are doing well. I read your article on PoloZone. If you do a tally with most high goal pros, I guarantee the majority of them think that Santa Barbara is the best polo destination in the world. Hands down. The problem is with the patrons. We no longer have the local sponsors spending money. The days of Pat Nesbitt, Mike Hakan, Tom Barrack, Glen Holden putting teams together ARE OVER. These guys all loved the club and felt at home, regardless of the recurring management problems and politics.
The club ownership needs to find a way of aligning its interests with the new boys on the block from Florida and Houston. Not sure how. But reducing to 16-18 goal is not the best solution. I think its a power struggle game which needs to be played out.
Lyndon Lea, Scott Wood, John Muse…They want the polo level to remain high, and they can most certainly afford it. Its time for the old guard to make some room for the new guys spending the money. I certainly do not see local patrons coming in to support 12- or 20-goal polo any time soon.”
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Santa Barbara snares fourth 20-goal team
By Alex Webbe
Minnesota’s Ryan Gilbertson will be entering a Wildcats team in this year’s series of 20-goal tournaments at the Santa Barbara Polo Club as the struggled to fortify the ranks the high-goal teams.
The defections of Ben Soleimani (Mansour) and Lyndon Lea (Zacara) to England, and the retirement of Pat Nesbitt (Windsor Capital), Andy Busch (Grants Manor Farm), Tom Barrack (Piocho Ranch) and Geoff Palmer (Antelope) from the high-goal ranks have left Santa Barbara in the lurch looking forward, with high-goal polo manager Phil Heatley scouring the barns for patrons and high-goal teams.
It was recently announced, however, that Gilbertson’s Wildcats team will be joining this year’s teams that include Lucchese (John Muse), ERG (Scott Wood) and Farmers and Merchants Bank (Henry and Dan Walker).
Lea had established a polo operation in Santa Barbara a few years ago, with Scott Wood following suit just a couple of years later. Feuding and infighting splintered the high-goal teams into separate camps with the Santa Barbara Polo Club suffering as a result.
Herculean efforts by Heatley, however, managed to secure a fourth team for the 2014 season with Lucchese (Tommy Collingwood, Sapo Caset, Jeff Hall and John Muse), ERG (Scott Wood, Agustin Merlos, Sebastian Merlos and Martin Munoz/Remy Mueller), Farmers Merchants Bank (Dan Walker, Inaki Laprida, Lucas Criado and Henry Walker) and Wildcats (Ryan Gilbertson, Joseph Stuart, Santiago Chavanne and Paco de Narvaez).
Four 20-goal tournaments are on tap with play in the El Encanto Cup beginning on July 2nd and ending with the final of the Bombardier Pacific Coast Open on August 31st.
High goal polo on the West Coast
For some inexplicable reason high-goal polo has struggled on the West Coast, with the Santa Barbara Polo Club being the last bastion of the 20-goal game. According to Horace Laffaye’s book “A History of Polo in the United States”
“Buried deep on the shelves of Yale University’s rare book collection in the Beincke Library there is a four page pamphlet with the title California Polo Club 1876. This written proof of early polo in the Golden State was discovered by historian Dennis J. Amato some years ago. The publication is an advertisement for an event to be held at Charter Oak Park on 17 October 1876, offering feats of horsemanship, buck-jumping and three games of polo. The pamphlet states that over 200,000 spectators have watched such polo events at Boston, Long Branch, Newport, Providence and Saratoga. Also included are the rules of the California Polo Club, the earliest known written rules of the game of polo in the United States.”
With polo roots that trace back that far you would think that the game would have been deeply ingrained into the sporting lifestyle of the West coasters, but such is not the case.
California has had its share of top players boasting Santa Barbara’s own10-goaler Elmer Boeseke, but there have been eras of feast and famine that have dogged any effort to establish a healthy and ongoing polo legacy.Certainly the impact of the Conant and Walton families soundly impacted the California polo community and runs of high-goal competition being presented in Indio, CA at both the El Dorado Polo Club and the Empire Polo Club, but the roots weren’t deep enough.
Polo families have always been the backbone of polo in this country, but unless those families continue to propagate sons and daughters of their own onto the polo scene the legacy ends.
The outlook for continuing high-goal polo in California might look dim for the moment, but stay tuned because it has always found a way to bounce back.
Some of that “bounce back” will be seen at the Santa Barbara Polo Club this summer with four 20-goal tournaments in place.