The Ultimate in Frequent Flying : Tongg Covers About 5,000 Miles a Week to Compete Against the Best in Polo

Have a long commute to work, do you? A couple of tedious hours, perhaps, from the Valley to downtown Los Angeles?

Don’t complain to Ronnie Tongg. His commutes are measured in time zones-- three time zones. Sure, he does take the scenic route, flying from Honolulu to Los Angeles, but spending six hours and covering 2,400 miles each way crammed into a 727 every week can make even the skies over the Pacific seem unfriendly.

Nonetheless, every Thursday between now and December, Tongg will journey from his home on Oahu to his part-time job in Burbank, where he plays forward for the Los Angeles Colts of the American Polo League. He’ll spend Fridays practicing with teammates Joe Henderson and Tom Goodspeed, play in the league’s weekly match on Saturdays at the Los Angeles Equestrian and Polo Center--the fall season begins at 8 tonight--then return to Oahu the next day.

No big thing, really, Tongg says. He took the island-to-mainland express throughout the summer season, which ended in July when the Colts won the first-ever arena league championship with a 12-11 victory over the San Francisco Buccaneers. “I’m used to traveling,” he says. “The trip’s not bad. You can get a lot done when you fly.”

If Tongg sounds like an airline poster boy, it’s because he is. He owes his polo playing career and a lot of fine living to Aloha Airlines, which his father, Ruddy, founded in 1946. A decade later, after amassing his fortune through real estate and commercial airlines, the elder Tongg took up polo with his family. The Tonggs just happened to have a spare horse ranch on the island of Hawaii, so Ruddy and Ronnie began playing and learning the game from Peter Perkins, a well-known poloist.

Four years later, nothing-but-the-best-for-my-boy Ruddy lured Bill Linfoot, considered by many the finest player in the United States, to the Tongg ranch to teach Ronnie. Linfoot, though, did him one better--he allowed Ronnie to join his team and travel around the world competing in big-time tournaments in the Philippines, England, France, Colombia and Mexico.

In 1962, Tongg played on a team with Linfoot (a nine-goal player), Roy Barry Jr. and Bob Skene, who had achieved the highest ranking of any player worldwide at 10 goals. The then-17-year-old Tongg was ranked at one goal. All qualified players are ranked from minus-1 to 10 goals by the U.S. Polo Assn.

“A lot of experts didn’t think our team would be very good because I was so young,” Tongg says now, with more than a trace of in-your-face sarcasm. He became the youngest player ever on a team to win the U.S. Open--the most coveted of this country’s polo tournaments--when his team took the title in 1962. Later that year, Tongg and Linfoot played on a team that won another big event, the Pacific Coast Open.

From there, the game became more than a champagne-sipping sport for the Tonggs. It became a passion--one that eventually led to tragedy. In 1964, while playing with his sons in a match in Honolulu, Ruddy, then 54, was bumped off his horse by an opponent. He crashed to the turf, suffering a concussion, and was paralyzed on the right side of his body.

“I still remember when the ambulance came to take him away,” Ronnie says. “I was really upset, but we kept on playing. The game can be dangerous, and the accident was hard, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to play polo.”

In the next five years, Tongg improved his ranking to six goals and continued to globe-trot from New Zealand to Argentina to Europe in search of tournaments. In 1971, Linfoot and Tongg played for the team that won teamed to win the Coronation Cup, a competition between England and the U.S.

In recent years, Tongg became interested in arena polo, a hybrid of the traditional game and roller derby. The indoor version is played on a dirt surface the size of a football field bordered by wooden or concrete walls. Each team has three riders instead of the four in traditional polo, but the closer confines cause more bumping and bashing. Think of it as hockey with horses substituting for skates.

Tongg had played--and survived--arena polo on the ranch in the early years with Perkins, his first instructor. When Equestrian Center officials asked about his availability for their indoor league, he was anxious to mount up. Initially, he played for Hawaii, but when a position opened on the Colts’ roster in December, he agreed to make the journey across three time zones every week.

Tongg joined Goodspeed, an eight-goal arena player, and Henderson, one of only three nine-goalers in the world. In the summer season, the trio formed what some believed to be the best arena polo team anywhere--an assessment with which Tongg agreed. “Joe and Tom are the two best arena players in the United States,” he says. “And we’re just beginning to reach our potential.”