No More Horsing Around : Polo: Lure of man and beast working together draws serious athletes to a unique team sport.

A year ago, Scott Walker’s thoughts about polo--Isn’t that the sport of horses and caviar?--were like those of a majority of the masses.

“I just assumed you had to be royalty or independently wealthy to pick polo up,” Walker said.

But that was before Walker moved near the Playa Grande Polo Club in Huntington Beach and discovered a sport seemingly more suited to the rich and famous is also accessible to commoners.

Curiosity led him to take several lessons ($50 for an hour-long private session at the club, including polo pony). He got hooked.

“I just thought I’d play it for a couple of weeks, so I could tell my friends, ‘Yeah, I played polo,’ ” Walker said.

A year later, Walker, a real estate broker, is a member of a Playa Grande team that will play for the Southern California Arena Polo League title today and Sunday at the Playa Grande Club.

Arena polo is a down-sized version of the traditional game, which is played on a grass expanse the size of nine football fields. Arena matches are played in a 100-yard by 50-yard, dirt-floored arena surrounded by a four-foot wall that keeps the ball in play during the four 7 1/2-minute chukkars.

In arena polo, there are three players to a side--one less than usual--and the inflated ball is slightly larger than the hard plastic one used in traditional polo.

It’s a quicker game, somewhat akin to ice hockey or indoor soccer, except the players are on horseback and swinging what look like elongated croquet mallets.

The combination of human and beast working together makes polo unique among team sports.

That may be why Heather Vandeweghe keeps coming back to polo. Vandeweghe, the sister of NBA veteran Kiki, professional beach volleyball player Bruk and 1984 U.S. Olympic volleyball player Tauna, attended Stanford on a tennis scholarship.

She also spent time as the captain of the U.S. national women’s polo team, and rededicated herself to the sport after finishing medical school two years ago. Vandeweghe’s team, Lancer Construction, will play Playa Grande for the arena league title Sunday.

“I come from a sporting family and I’ve played a lot of sports, but this is the one that’s completely addictive,” she said. “I guess it’s because it involves so many elements of sports and sportsmanship.

“I’ve tried to figure out what it is exactly. I’ve talked about it with my dad, and he thinks for me it’s because it involves another animal.”

The horses, mostly thoroughbreds, are obviously crucial to the sport. In conventional polo wisdom, the sport is 75% horse power.

“If the horse can get you to the play and have the ball at the right spot, then hitting the ball is easy,” explains Denny Geiler, a member of the Playa Grande team.

Geiler, an attorney from Newport Beach who started playing polo seven years ago, said a good polo horse seems to develop a feel for the game.

“Some of the horses get to know the game so well that when a penalty is called and the referee blows the whistle, the horse just stops because he knows that is a timeout,” Geiler said.

Of course, the horses take their directions from the players, who are hopefully versed in the right-of-way rules that protect horse and rider. Kathy Batchelor, the Playa Grande club professional, is charged with teaching the sport to the club’s many novice players.

Batchelor, a former circus trick rider, also plays for the Playa Grande team. Last year she was named the most valuable player after leading Playa Grande to the championship.

After a 20-year career in the horse business that included team roping competitions and dressage, Batchelor settled on polo.

“It was about the only thing I hadn’t done,” Batchelor said. “It’s a little different attitude and not such an exacting sport.”

Gary Moeller, a Newport Beach resident who plays for the Lancer team, has been playing for about a year. He was a standout high school football and baseball player who signed a minor-league contract with the Dodgers in the 1960s. He admits he probably considered polo an effete sport.

“If I had any idea what polo was about, I would have started playing 20 years ago,” Moeller said. “It’s like driving a dragster.”

Facts and Figures

What: Southern California Arena Polo League Championship

Where: Playa Grande Polo Club, Central Park Equestrian Center, 18381 Golden West Blvd., Huntington Beach.

When: Saturday, 2 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.

Wherewithal: Free admission