The Polo Report
By Steve Crowder

Polo is in full flight around the Northern Hemisphere or soon will be.  Sotogrande,  Chantilly,
and Paris are in action. I’m not sure about St. Tropez and Deauville in France. England /UK
is definitely in motion as about 5 tournaments of 12 and above are going on.  The big one is the
Queens Cup where two part-time Santa Barbara residents are in the mix going to the quarter finals.
John Muse and his Lucchese team and Lyndon Lea and Zacara have both earned a spot in the Quarters.
This is the first of 3 very big tournaments at 22-goals in the UK where it rains more often than
not. The is cost more than anywhere else and they have 15 teams.  Here in California we beg for teams where it never rains never, gets too hot. We have four teams … WHY? There may be more than one reason.  One reason … there may be a lot more wealthy people in Europe than here.   Or it may be they like it better in England, but whatever it is we are not doing the right thing. We have all the things to make this an amazing destination … weather, water, Hollywood, big cities nearby and nearly any activity you desire.  With all of this California has no new polo teams and we have to struggle to get a 4-team quorum. What do we do? Drop the handicap to 16 -or 18-goal seems to be the answer as we did back in the early 90’s and build it back up.

I have always said if you can afford to play Polo you can definitely afford not to.  I am not convinced this is the reason. We have to make this a destination for Summer polo.  If we can get 8 teams at 18- or 16- goals we should do it.  The way I see it, we had to lower the handicap back in the 90’s and it did help so
maybe that is the answer.   Begging for 4 teams is not going to work. We have 8 fields here in the area that are first class and we need to use them to sell this as a polo destination.  Forget about Santa Barbara Polo Club … sell Santa Barbara Polo.  We have to change something as we are going nowhere. Now we struggle to have 12-goal polo with fresh fields and nice weather and weekend polo for working Patrons. WHY? Send me your thoughts about why you think this is happening and what some solutions may be. You do not have to identify yourself and I will not unless you want me to.

The choices seem to be :
drop to 18 goal if 8 guaranteed teams if 10 lower price
drop to 16 goal if 8 guaranteed teams if 10 lower price

Or maybe :
Build a purse for $100,000 a tournament.  If 8 teams find sponsors to do it with a bonus for a
triple winner. The key is the mentality.  We need them (we need players/teams).  We can no longer feel they have to come because this is the place to be. A lot of places have better fields and cost less, but nobody has our weather.

Like today …  June gloom missed the first day of June for first time in 10 years. Polo today was Leigh Breechen and her Film Finance team stopping Grants Farm to head to next Sunday Finals. It was a close game the first 3 and then Film blew away 4 and 5th and GF rallied in the 6th, but Leigh herself put the final nail in when she took the ball off the boards running a 150 yds and sticking the blow that ended the rally.

The 3 o’clock game was a taste of the future. If we can survive until then, there were 2 pros on each team and some very young talent on their first trip to field 1 at prime time. The youngest was 12-year-old Grant Palmer, Son of Geoff and Mrs Palmer. He is going to be a big stick soon. On the other side was young Charlie Walker, a little older at around 14. He was really moving well in addition to the son of Henry Walker and Alonzo Cruz, son of Diego Cruz.  These Young Guns along with some other young men here, the Klentner boys Luke and Jake and Collin Brown,  I am sure I missed a couple, but they could brighten the lights here soon.

Well if you would give us your opinion on our immediate future. Maybe we can lose a little prestige, but not our game. I just do not want to see what happened in the Desert and Houston where it went from 20 and 22 goal Polo down to 8 and 12 goal being our only Polo.

see ya.