When last we left this intrepid Sports Fan, I had weasled into the bleachers in the far, far corner of the International Polo Club Palm Beach grounds. This is where a $20 General Admission ticket will get you if you are attending the U.S. Open Polo Championships. I was firmly planted in The G.A., where the lack of amenities is made up for by the lack of a decent sight line. I was reminded of Caddies Field Day at the country club at which I grew up caddying. We had use of the facilities, but there were…limitations.

Clearly the folks at the International Polo Club have done a great job of creating awareness and drawing people to the facility. Having done that though, the proprietors seemed to waffle on whether to be traditional and exclusive, or “fan-friendly” via the use of the most up-to-date (and cheesiest) techniques in sports marketing. On the one hand, The G.A. represented a new realm in fan segregation – but on the other, the only thing missing from the day’s festivities was an air-cannon firing jodhpurs into the stands. They had sky-jumpers land on the field. A jet flyover prior to the start of the game. A mascot named Chukker the Pony (I am not kidding). I got the feeling that the event organizers drew their inspiration from a mashup of the 16th hole at the Phoenix Open, Spring Break at Daytona Beach, and a local Chuck E. Cheese franchise.

This much I did discern – as a spectator sport polo has huge hurdles to overcome. The field is so large (an area that could fit nine football fields laid out three by three) you can’t possibly see all the action from one single position, as in other stadium sports like football or soccer. And there is no accommodation made for roaming, as is the case with golf, which offers the largest field of play in sports. NASCAR’s answer to this challenge is the Jumbo Tron and the fan’s knowledge that the action will always come back to them on a regular, repeated basis. There’s no such guarantee in polo, and the further away from midfield you are, the higher are the odds against more than an occasional up-close-and-personal view of the game. It’s like trying to watch a compelling touch football game in your neighbor’s yard – your neighbor eight doors down the street. You know there’s something interesting going on over there, but damned if you can make any sense of it.

I must say this – on the rare instances that I got to see a glimpse of play close up, the essence of the game was pretty awe-inspiring. The word “thundering” is not mere hyperbole here – I could feel it in my chest when all eight horses bore down on the goal on my end of the field. The dexterity that players displayed in simultaneously controlling a horse at full gallop AND making solid contact with a ball slightly larger than a tennis ball was unlike anything else that I can think of in sports.

As mightily as I tried though, it was hard for this polo novice to pick up on much of the strategy of the game. Action in the middle of the field tended to conjure up images of a pee-wee soccer game, as everybody in the game swarmed around the ball, swatting indiscriminately. Plays began to develop hundreds of yards away from me, so there was little opportunity to see them unfold. Then, all of a sudden there would be a rush to my end of the field, typically led by one horse that had broken away from the pack and one or more horses in hot pursuit.

Adding a bit of complexity to the situation was that teams “swapped ends” after each goal was scored. For example, after Audi Polo scored at one end of the field, they would defend that same goal when play resumed. With no stationary “goalie” to remind you who was shooting on what goal, it got confusing as to who was on offense and who was on defense at any given time – especially when the preponderance of recent play had been at the opposite end of the field. But from what I observed, the typical course of play is as follows:
1) Gallop after ball
2) Raise your mallet to beg for a foul call
3) Shoot an uncontested free shot on goal

Over half the goals that I saw were scored on free shots, many of them in this exact manner. There’s something a little disconcerting about a man on top of a horse nudging a small ball forward ten yards through an opening created by two posts spaced nine yards apart – and then celebrating wildly. Maybe it’s just me.

I was a long way from 90% of the action, the speaker systems that were positioned to aim at each of the midfield sidelines created only an unintelligible echo for us in The G.A., and I could barely make out the existence of a scoreboard at the far end of the field, let alone actually read it. Hands down it was the most challenging spectator sport experience I’ve ever had – which might help explain why so few people were actually spectating. For as I learned, a polo game is actually a cocktail party in search of a sporting event to which it can attach itself.

Much to my surprise, as soon as halftime began the stands and tents emptied out and people streamed out to the middle of the field for…well, I didn’t know for what. My first thought was that they were out there to tramp down divots made by the horse’s hooves, per custom, but nobody was doing any divot-tramping on their way to midfield. In the interest of journalistic pursuit, I decided to join the crowd and check out what was going on.

Once I arrived at mid-field I found my answer. Everyone was hell-bent on getting free stuff – cheap glasses of pink champagne, ice cream bars and small foam souvenir ponies – all delivered from the back of two pick-up trucks by an event squad featuring Chukker the Pony mascot. I could sense the inventors of the sport looking down on the spectacle and tisk-tisking away.

A quick conversation with a women who seemed to be in the know confirmed that we were all out there ostensibly to help with field maintenance, but when I asked about the reasoning behind all of the ancillary stuff, she grinned and made a sweeping gesture with her arms, “What else? To draw the crowds!” A couple of follow-up questions revealed that she was actually a true polo person and horse owner who had mixed feelings about the mass-marketing of her sport. It seemed that she had come to grips with it, but she did tell me that the one thing that drove her crazy was the clothes. She told me that you can spot the true polo people because they were wearing Levi’s – “I look at how the women here are dressed and wonder if they think they’re at the Kentucky Derby.”

Rainfall, which had been threatening all day, finally arrived at that point, driving the crowds to abandon the field and seek cover. I did the same, in the only venue open to me – the Wellington Zone tent in the far reaches of The G.A. It wasn’t so bad in there, as I was dry and relatively warm, and I had a clear view of a television monitor that flickered on and off, intermittently providing coverage of the action on the field. But I was one of a handful of people in The G.A. who was actively tracking the game. When Audi Polo scored to close the deficit to two goals, the closest it had been since early in the first chukker, one woman let out a solitary whoop, but most never looked up from their cocktails and their conversation.

For the record, the game ended 13-8, with the Crab Orchard Polo Team defeating Audi Polo and claiming the U.S. Open title. For some unknown reason, the game ended with 29 seconds still showing on the scoreboard clock, triggering wild celebration on the far end of the field. Down in The G.A., nobody noticed the game was over.