POLO: : Professionals Drawn to Sport of Well-Heeled--and Well-Hooved

When Martin Joseph began polo lessons two years ago at Anaco Ranch in Anaheim, he had never ridden before. However, the Anaheim attorney soon discovered that polo was the “sport I’d been looking for all my life.”

Joseph relished the challenge of controlling with one hand a 1,200-pound horse galloping at 25 m.p.h. while trying to hit a small ball with a mallet in his other hand. The sport required the kind of skill and concentration he had enjoyed while playing baseball in his youth.

Today, Joseph, 31, is a self-described “polo fanatic.” He has five polo ponies valued at $30,000 and spends $18,000 a year on their upkeep. With two friends, Joseph has bought a $20,000 truck and $10,000 trailer to haul the horses to polo tournaments throughout Southern California.

Joseph is among the scores of upwardly mobile young professionals in Orange County who have taken up polo in the ‘80s.

No one knows exactly how many in the county have traded in their tennis racquets and ski poles for polo mallets. But at Anaco Ranch alone, 65 students are paying $35 an hour for lessons, said Jeff Moss, 31, the facility’s polo pro.

After a 21-year absence, polo returned to Orange County in 1984 with the founding of the Winston Polo Club at Anaco Ranch. The South Coast Polo Club sprang up last year and plays at several different fields.

The county’s third club will be launched next month when Sycamore Polo Club holds its first tournament at Sycamore Trails Stables in San Juan Capistrano, said organizer Susan Bollinger, 38, a Laguna Beach businesswoman.

“It used to be that every now and then a polo player would come in for riding equipment, and I’d have to order it,” recalled Ray Rasmussen, who since 1966 has operated Rasmussen’s Saddleback Saddlery, a Tustin horse equipment store.

But with so many people taking up the sport, Rasmussen two years ago began to stock polo equipment.

The new converts to polo are not the snobbish, old-money types who have dominated the game in the past, said South Coast Polo Club organizer Aurora Dawn Harris, 32, a Newport Beach attorney. They are also playing a new form of polo--”arena polo.”

“It’s something the working man can play,” Rasmussen said, about the scaled-down version of traditional outdoor polo. “You can rent horses and equipment, and you can take lessons to play.” That is how he got started in the sport two years ago.

Arena polo is played on a field that’s 100 yards long (the same as football), 50 feet wide and bordered by 4-foot-high fences or concrete walls, explained Dr. Richard Foxx, 47, a Newport Beach gynecologist and avid player who serves as Polo magazine’s West Coast correspondent. It can be played indoors or outdoors.

In contrast, traditional outdoor polo is played on a field 300 yards long and 200 yards wide. Spectators need binoculars to follow the action, Foxx said.

Arena polo has three horsemen on each team, rather than the four-person teams that play outdoor polo, Foxx said. Arena polo consists of four periods, or “chukkers,” each lasting 7 1/2 minutes, rather than the six chukkers played in outdoor polo.

The object of both variations of the game, Foxx said, is to move a 10-ounce ball downfield and across the goal line by hitting it with mallets while riding spirited ponies. Arena polo uses a softball-size rubber ball, while outdoor polo uses a wooden one.

Riders must switch to fresh mounts after each chukker to keep from exhausting their horses. Because arena polo fields are smaller, a player needs only two or three horses rather than the eight to 10 horses needed to play outdoor polo, Foxx said.

Don Patch, captain of the South Coast Polo Club, who played polo in the county until the early ‘60s, said the reason polo disappeared is because the county’s last outdoor polo field in Garden Grove was paved over in 1963 for an apartment complex.

“After that there weren’t more than a handful of people who traveled outside the county to play, and I was one of ‘em,” said Patch, 56, the owner of a Fountain Valley dental supply company. He has been playing the sport for more than 40 years.

The excitement and popularity of arena polo was evident at the Orange County Fairgrounds last Friday afternoon during an exhibition game played by teams from Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura and San Diego counties.

The round-robin club tournament was won by the Tri Valley Polo Club of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, which scored 13 goals. Trailing close behind were two Orange County teams, Pimm’s Battlin’ Barristers, with 12 goals, and Rasmussen’s Raiders with seven goals.

Several family teams played a couple of chukkers. Sporting blue Anderson Farm polo shirts, Robert Anderson, 45, of Orange Park Acres, and his two daughters, Shannon, 15, and Bobbie, 11, teamed up for play.

Bollinger, the organizer of the new Sycamore Polo Club, played on a team with her daughter, Kimberlee, 21, a Laguna Beach flight attendant, and Pam McCord, 34, a Newport Beach legal secretary.

“Playing polo is like a legal high,” said Bollinger, who has played 2 1/2 years. “You get such an adrenaline rush during the game that when you get off your horse after a chukker, you’re ready to jump right back on a fresh horse and start playing again. Polo is definitely addictive.”

“It’s such a release,” Sunny Hale, 17, said. “With polo, you never get bored because you have to make quick decisions that your life may depend on.” Hale, who played Friday for Ventura County’s Moorpark Polo Club, is considered the best junior player (under 18) in the nation.

Hale’s skills are such that she played two chukkers Friday afternoon with the professional Los Angeles Colts after one of their members was injured when the mallet of an opposing player struck a glancing blow to his nose.

The Colts, who play at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, are considered one of the best professional polo teams in the country, said Patch as he admired the finesse of Hale’s play.

It’s not unusual for serious--and wealthy--outdoor polo players to have a string of 10 horses and to spend $150,000 a year on the game, said Foxx.

An arena polo player’s start-up cost is between $10,000 to $14,000, which covers the purchase of two horses and riding equipment, said Moss, the pro at Anaco Ranch. Annual outlays for such items as board, veterinary bills and hauling horses to tournaments are $6,000 to $8,000, he added.

Bollinger, however, who owns two polo ponies, said that it only costs her about $2,000 a year to play the sport. “Despite its image, you don’t have to be rich to play. I spend $30 a week for lessons; you spend more than that for a night out.”

“I haven’t found polo to be any more expensive than raising horses in general,” said Anderson of Orange Park Acres. “We’ve been raising thoroughbreds at our place for several years, so fortunately we already had a place to keep our polo ponies.”

During the two years they’ve played, the Andersons have bought seven polo ponies. They spend about $12,000 a year on polo lessons and upkeep, he said.

Rasmussen, who said his Saddleback Saddlery is one of at least three horse equipment firms in the county that carry polo equipment, ticked off the cost of some of the more important riding gear: $200 boots, $70 helmets, $25 mallets and $40 knee guards.

On Friday afternoon, spectators gathered at the far end of the field at the beginning of each chukker. Among the onlookers were Holly Ackman and her daughter Amber, of Irvine. Amber, 8, was trying to persuade her mother to let her take up polo.

“My daughter is a horse fanatic, and this is her introduction to polo,” a bemused Ackman said. “It’s rougher and more dangerous than I expected. Still, the players are friendlier and more gentlemanly than I thought they would be.”

A beaming Amber did not share her mother’s reservations. “I think polo’s exciting,” said Amber, who’s been riding for three years.

As Pimm’s Battlin’ Barristers played a chukker with the Moorpark Musketeers, Neil Truka, 39, of San Juan Capistrano, watched with his wife, Margo, 39. Truka, a personnel administrator who once played polo, said he doesn’t believe that the game is a “sport for the common person. You’ve got to have a string of polo ponies, and most people just can’t afford that.”

Jay Sponagle, 34, a teacher from Dana Point, watched with his wife, Cheryl Baughn, 38, a school administrator.

“It looks hard to do,” said Sponagle as he watched his first live polo match. “I’m amazed they’re able to control the horses and hit the ball at the same time. The horse seems to be as much a player as the rider.”

Added Baughn: “It’s nice to see women play. I didn’t realize they did. Seeing it this close up doesn’t make polo as elitist as I thought it was. It’s more like any other sports match; you want to get as close as you can so you can see how good individual players are at handling their horses and hitting the ball.”