Polo Renaissance

Yes, there was one gleaming black Bentley (but only one) parked on the greensward at Myopia Hunt Club in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. True, some elegant tailgating went on nearby, with white wines, goat cheese, and even beautiful flower arrangements set up on card tables. But the spectators who came for the exhibition polo match, pitting the Harvard Polo Club’s men’s and women’s teams against Myopia on a spectacular September Sunday afternoon, made up a relaxed and decidedly casual bunch. “Polo has the image of being a ‘Great Gatsby’ sport, and it markets that image,” says Crocker Snow Jr. ’61, a lifelong polo enthusiast who played that afternoon and coaches the Harvard men’s team. “But it isn’t that—it’s a dungaree sport. It involves the care, feeding, and training of horses, and practicing on them. You do it all in dungarees.”

Indeed, Snow’s wife, Cissie Jones Snow, who mentors the Crimson women’s team, adds that a bona fide “white breeches” game (polo players wear white riding breeches in competition) is a serious event indeed: “It’s like putting on your uniform to go to war.” Harvard’s mounted warriors fared well at Myopia—so named because its five founders were all shortsighted—winning, 7-5, after six seven-and-a-half-minute “chukkers” (periods of play). The match benefited the recently revived Harvard Polo Club, and certain rules were relaxed, like those about mixing genders: the men played four chukkers and the women two. One of Snow’s polo-playing sons, Harvard captain and star player Nick Snow ’09, dominated the field, scoring five of his team’s seven goals.

The week before, seven Harvard players of varied skill spent five days training at the 6,000-acre ranch in San Saba, Texas, owned by Tommy Lee Jones ’69. Film star Jones is an avid polo player who sponsors the high-level San Saba pro polo team. He told the undergraduates he had invited them because he knew that Harvard students could learn quickly, so even a five-day session would pay off. It was polo boot camp: breakfast at 6:30 a.m. for both horses and riders, who were tacked and ready to play from 8:00 a.m. until noon; a midday strategy and rule session, followed by more polo from 3:30 p.m. until darkness. “It was pretty intense,” says Meera Atreya ’09, a dressage rider before taking up polo. “Those polo ponies were the best horses I’ve been on—they had very soft mouths [were highly responsive].” Toward the end, Harvard scrimmaged with and upset the 2006 national champions, Texas Tech, 10-8, in an arena match, vindicating Jones’s confidence; he invited the Harvard riders to return for two or three weeks next year.

Polo is an ancient sport, played in Persia as a form of cavalry training perhaps as early as the sixth century B.C. At Harvard, polo clubs have come and gone during the last century. Crimson riders won national championships in 1929 and 1933; the most recent active period ran from 1991 to 1993. The current revival, spearheaded by the Snow family (Nick Snow led the charge last year, in response to interest from Extension School student Michael Svetska), involves about 15 undergraduates, nearly half of them women recruited from the Harvard Equestrian Club. Last fall Harvard took on the Universities of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia, competed in a regional tournament at Cornell, and beat Yale.

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