Travel Blog

After 12 hours at the Miami Open on Saturday I needed a break, so Sunday I went to a polo match. Our friend Don is a fan – not just of the sport, but the quiet pageantry that surrounds it – so we drove up to the International Polo Club in Wellington to watch Colorado play Audi. The second name made me wonder if sponsors of the sport had taken the advertising on players’ shirts – as one sees with Qatar Airways and FC Barcelona – to a new level by simply renaming the team.

After buying our tickets we walked across the field to see the people having a pre-game lunch on the patio of a low-slung building bearing the name of Veuve Clicquot. The females especially, many in sunhats, reminded me of the society women one sees shots of at the Kentucky Derby. There must be something about horses and hats. Yes, the horses run outdoors, but so do football players.

Then we walked down the sideline and looked at the horses. There were dozens of them, not just the requisite eight, because, as Don explained, substitutes are sent in regularly. I was reminded that the Derby is often called “the most exciting two minutes in sports,” and those thoroughbreds aren’t stopping and starting and constantly changing direction.

We passed a canopy under which a dozen mallets had been laid. They made me think of the Peter de Vries novel in which one of the characters, a polo writer, discovers late in his career that the players hit the ball with the whole mallet, not the end.

A woman came over and asked if we would like our picture taken. She raised horses, she told us, that she brought down for the season from Aiken, South Carolina. “How many horses do you have up there?” someone asked. “Eighty,” she said.

On the way back to the stands, we passed parked pick-up trucks and SUVs. Next to one truck a Great Dane reclined, its back to the field. I wondered if it was out of resentment that there were four-legged creatures bigger than it.

We found our seats and the game began, after the singing of the national anthem. (Ours only, not also that of Argentina.) When the action was far away, we would talk like at a baseball game, but when the ball rolled over in our vicinity the sound of pounding hooves and the shouts of riders, the smack of mallet on ball, sent our hearts racing.

At halftime all the spectators left their seats and walked onto the field, where plastic glasses were provided and champagne was poured by handsome young men in polo shirts.