First Lady of Polo Passes Her Passion On to Her Children : POLO: Passing On the Passion

Sue Sally Hale climbed through a railing to get a clearer view of her children, who were playing in a heated exhibition polo match at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank.

Amid the sounds of pounding hoofs and the announcer’s game calls, Hale yelled encouragement to her youngest son, Trails, 14, but not to her daughters, Stormie, 20, and Sunset, 16.

“Trails is the youngest. He needs to hear more encouragement,” she said matter-of-factly.

Hale, 48, of Moorpark, is sensitive to such things as encouragement and support. Both were in short supply during her youth, and for 20 years she played polo disguised as a boy.

But she drew on her own considerable determination and sheer will to break several of the rules that govern the sport. Hale came from a background without much money and, in 1972, became the first woman to be a rated member of the United States Polo Assn. “She could ride a horse like a Comanche and hit the ball like a Mack truck,” swooned one polo magazine.

Years of Effort

Earlier in the day, Hale’s brother, Bob Jones of Westlake Village, watched his sister and her children pack 12 horses into the trailer for the match between the Ventura County Polo Club and Beverly Hills High School. Shaking his head in wonder, he said, “She accomplished what she said she would accomplish.”

But it was a long way getting there.

Hale’s father was Grover Jones, a screen writer who wrote “Lives of a Bengal Lancer” and “42nd Street.” Her mother was an actress and ballet dancer, and Hale’s stepfather was stunt man Richard Talmadge.

“Mother brought me to my first polo game when she got out of the hospital after she had me,” Hale said.

She got her first horse when she was 3, about the time her father died. As she grew older, she spent a lot of time riding in the Santa Monica Mountains, pretending to hunt mountain lions.

There were polo fields nearby and she went to every game. Inspired by watching the matches of the visiting Argentines at the old Riviera Polo Club, Hale said, she knew that someday she would play.

First Break

One Sunday, when she was 12, the years of patient waiting paid off.

“I played my heart out, but I must have made a lot of mistakes, because every second of the time Duke was yelling at me,” she recalled, referring to Duke Coulter, manager of what is now Will Rogers State Park. “When the game was over, all I could think about was getting out of there as fast as I could.”

The next Sunday, Hale stayed home. That evening Coulter called her and asked her why she hadn’t attended the game.

“I told him that I was just ruining the game for everyone,” Hale said. Coulter asked her if she wanted to play the game or not. She answered yes.

“Then be out on the field Thursday for practice,” he told her.

From there, Hale’s serious polo career began. Coulter took her under his wing. She played on ponies she bought with money she earned giving riding lessons, and she trained the horses herself.

When she played in tournaments, she posed as a boy, wearing her hair pinned up and dressing in loose men’s shirts.

“I have wide shoulders, so they couldn’t tell,” she said.

Hale married and moved to Carmel, where she started a riding school and began giving polo lessons.

A few years later, when she and her then-husband, Alex Hale, were on vacation in Southern California, Coulter invited Hale to play at the Will Rogers Polo Club. She had to leave the field because members of the visiting team would not play against a woman.

“As we drove back to Carmel, I could see that she was mad. Not just temporarily angry, but permanently mad at the world,” Alex Hale wrote in an article called “Breaking Polo Wide Open” for WomenSports magazine several years ago.

Hale told her husband that she wanted to play tournament polo more than anything else in the world and that she was going to “become the best woman player in the world and they’ll have to accept me.”

Tournaments at Carmel

So she began inviting out-of-town teams to her Carmel Valley Polo Club, and they in turn began inviting her and her team to plan “unofficial games” on their fields. But, when it was time for tournament play, she had to sit on the sidelines.

Finally in 1972, after friends she had made on the playing field began putting individual and team pressure on the USPA, she was allowed to join.

“I guess that was the greatest moment in my sports life when I opened that envelope from Oakbrook, Ill. Inside were all the membership cards for the players in my club that year. On top of the pile was one for me,” she said.

Originally, Hale was giving a rating of one goal. (Polo players are ranked from 10 down, depending on how many goals they are expected to score in a regular game.) Now, however, she is rated a two-goaler, along with seven other women in the United States, but she says the comparison between them and herself is “like night and day.”

“That’s the hard part,” she said. “You have to take what is given you, although I feel I am lucky to have gotten what I have.”

Changes in Attitudes

Hale recognizes that, although she has been responsible for many changes in attitudes about women in polo, she also is a thorn in the side of the USPA.

“In California, the gals are treated better” than on the East Coast, she said. “But I’m the one who makes the most noise; I’m the one that makes the waves. I’m sure they’d rather I wasn’t around.”

Her beef for the past year with the USPA has been what she believes is a lack of USPA support of college teams.

“The disease of polo is the ‘Prince Charles syndrome,’ ” Hale said. “They forget that they have to keep refueling, keep getting new players. That’s why I’m so angry. There are 20 colleges with polo teams and they are doing nothing to help fund 12 of the teams that need help.

“Most of the kids have to beg, borrow to pay their own way. The kids in college are working against horrible odds. The USPA should support them, but they don’t. Instead, they will throw a party for a fancy polo game and put out thousands of dollars.”

After a stint managing the Willow Bend Polo and Hunt Club in Dallas, Hale and her children settled in Moorpark. She and her children teach polo and she sells horses, something Hale terms “not the most stable income in the world.

“I believe in dealing straight,” Hale said. “I can either sell a lot of horses for not a lot of money or several horses for a ton of money . . . but the horse may not fit the rider, and I can’t do that.”

These days, her five children and her business are the cornerstones of her life. She also coaches the polo team at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, and plays in mixed polo tournaments. But she no longer plays in women’s tournaments.

Tough Competition

“The ladies eat you alive and then they don’t come through. They will do anything to beat you, politically or on the field. I just want to play polo, I don’t want to crusade.”

Hale sat at a long dining table in her ranch-style home in Moorpark. The table was covered with notes and papers and she showed photographs of her children dressed up for a Halloween parade on their polo ponies.

She looked tired as she attempted to explain polo ratings.

“The ratings are given to you based upon who sees you, who wants you to move up and who doesn’t want you to move up. . . . My ego tells me that my daughter, Sunny, plays better than I and I doubt they will raise me.

“It seems to me that, when you are first at something, you’re last. I guess what I’m saying is that I love the sport but I sure don’t love all the people in it.”