The Polo Report
By Steve Crowder
July 17th, 21010
Everything changed last Sunday … the weather, the Polo and the mood. It was great after an exciting Ladies Final in the WCT. It was a 20-goal mismatch as Mansour ran into a live rattler in Piocho Ranch as they were drubbed by 8 goals, but Friday was a new tournament and the first of the Triple Crown series. The Skene Cup is named after famous 10-goal player Bob Skene. It was all new as opening with 8 teams and plenty of fireworks on a perfect July day ,about 75 degrees and sunny. Grant’s Farm Defending champs of the Pacific Coast Open beat defending Champs of the Skene quite easily from I hear. I did not see it, but the score was reported as 6 goals + to Grant’s Farm.
In the second game it was a fired up Scott Woods, who is much more mobile this year, and his ERG squad dealing with Big Bob J. from Colorado an Valiente. It came down to an overtime goal. Both teams stuttered, but always came back and made it a game. The overtime chukker was a long and wild one, but it was Valiente doing it in the end to go to + 1 .
In the 3rd game it was Lucchese taking on Zacara without the Boss, but well replaced for this tournament by young Robert Jornayvaz. Lucchese was without 1/2 their team as Adolfo Cambiaso is in the finals of the British Open Sunday. He flew in Lucas Criado on Friday morning to play for him, all ingredients to lose and also playing strange but great horses. Well not exactly as Criado may have been tired, but he never told the horses so they just zoomed around like Adolfo Cambias and Lucas hit the ball and the goal way too many times as they dominated Zacara well for 40 of the 42 + minutes. Lucchese goes to + 1. In the final game of the day it was a rematch of last Sunday minus the Boss Tom Barrack, who was replaced by his son TJ. Memo set his 4-goaler down and added his brother Carlos just 8 goals and Louis or Ben changed their lineup like it ought to be and well it was no runaway this time. In the end it was the other way as Mansour moves on to + 1 and Piocho 0 and 1. So sunday will leave only 2 losers as the losers of game 1 play each other and the winners play each other so should be a very good day for Polo. No one is out yet, so come on and see those ponies run. It all starts at 10 am. If you want to see the Gold Cup or British Open live it can be seen on Pololine.com but it is at like 6am Sunday CA tim.
see ya