Hawaiian Polo
By Don Chapman
What separates polo from other sports played with balls is the horses. And horses for most of us who reside in the American 1990s are rather like bidets. You know what they're for, but are not entirely sure what to do with them once you're in the saddle.
It's the horses, as much as the money it takes to play this ancient game, that gives polo it's aura of mystery and glamor. Polo was glamorous even before Ralph Lauren came along and slapped a polo man and pony on everything from oxford shirts to golf shorts to after shave. Heck, polo was glamorous before ponies became synonomous with the Old West.
In Hawaii, that mystery and glamor are evident at five polo fields on three islands, although the atmosphere is decidedly more casual than at Mainland, European or Hong Kong polo matches.
"We're not West Palm Beach and we never will be West Palm Beach," says Paula Jensen of the newly re-named Hawaii International Polo Club at Mokuleia on Oahu's North Shore.
And, despite the bumper stickers you see around -- "New York. London. Paris. Waimanalo." -- neither does the Honolulu Polo Club in Waimanalo have much in common with any of those toney places.
But not being those places is also quite wonderful when you're Mokuleia or Waimanalo. The same can be said of polo operations at Makawao, Maui and Waiki`i Ranch and Kohala Ranch on the Big Island.
You're not likely to see Robin Leach on location at any of them for "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."
Sure, you'll still see signs of wealth at local polo matches. But it's mostly on the field, not in the parking lot. Expense-wise, as a hobby, keeping a stable of polo ponies falls somewhere between golf and funding a NASA rocket launch to send your family to the Moon for Father's Day. A good polo pony, says Bob McGregor, the founder of the Waimanalo club, costs "between $8,000 and $10,000, and ideally you'll have four horses. That way, you'll always play with a fresh horse."
All of which means that at Hawaii polo matches, mostly average income folks sit around and picnic while watching mostly rich guys risk their lives on 1,000-pound animals running around at 30 miles an hour and swinginging big sticks.
Reckless, yes. Wreck-less, no.
As Bob McGregor, founder of the Honolulu Polo Club, says: "In polo, it's not a question of if you'll get hurt. It's just a question of when."
McGregor, still playing polo at age 79, has broken both legs and arms, several fingers and ribs, and suffered so many concussions that he's seen more stars than Carl Sagan.
Which gives a whole new slant to the term "polo operation."
"Heck, we had four guys go down last Sunday, four different incidents," says McGregor, whose Tradewind Tours has been a major player in the Hawaii visitor industry for decades. "But only one of them was anything. Bobby Hogan broke a rib, and he wouldn't admit it for several days."
As he spoke, McGregor showed off a forearm where he "caught a ball the other day. It looks like one of those Union 76 balls." As in big, round, purple and orange.
And they say that TV is violent. Ha!
Few sports -- not football, not rugby, not ice hockey -- have the same potential for the dramatic violence that polo offers on every play. Demolition derbies come closest.
The remarkable thing is that so many people find this to be the perfect entertainment for a Sunday afternoon picnic in an idyllic setting.
The Waimanalo field, for instance, is tucked at the base of the fluted Koolau mountains, steep, green and shadowy. Tradewinds, fresh off the ocean a quarter-mile away, rustle in the tall ironwood trees that ring the field. The Mokuleia field is set between the Waianae Mountains and the blue Pacific, which glistens through the line of ironwoods and palm trees on the north side of the field. Eucalyptus scents the air on Maui. At Waiki`i Ranch, the field is set between two grass-covered volcanic cones.
At each of these sites, patrons -- "fans" is really not the proper noun here -- set up tables and chairs, or sit on blankets, open a bottle of wine or three and snack for eight chukkars. That's for, not on eight chukkars. A chukkar is the polo equivalent of a quarter or period; most local clubs play two matches of four chukkars on game days. Much of the food is catered. Seldom is the wine bad.
Honolulu Polo Club manager Mike Ebinger has added a new and tasteful twist this year -- food and drinks catered by Compadres. Polo and margaritas. As Mike says: "It's such a good idea, why didn't somebody think of this before?!"
Why ask why?
In a further attempt to attract more paying patrons, both Waimanalo and Mokuleia clubs offer post-game entertainment by a variety of local bands. Among the celebrity poloists who have played music following their games here are rock drum legends Ginger Baker (Cream, etc.) and Stuart Copeland (the Police). Clubs also sponsor days when everyone is encouraged to dress in theme -- Gatsby, country & western, Mongolian horde. Just kidding about that last one. But it does provide a segue.
As colorful as polo is in Hawaii, it pales utterly when compared to the game's roots. Historians disagree on exactly how and where polo began, but most arguments favor either Mongolia or Afghanistan.
Early Afghans, whose modern descendents were tough enough to drive out the Soviet Army`s military might and technological superiority, used to play a game with 40 mounted men to a side shooting at goals that were five miles apart. We are not making this up. Like polo, they used a stick. But instead of a ball, they used the stick to pick up and carry a headless goat, then started a five-mile fast-break. We are still not making this up. A penalty box or even minor rules violations like offsides were concepts with which the ancient Afghans were unfamiliar. Thus, using whips and sticks to distract the opposition by hitting them in the face was as much a part of the game as scratching is to baseball.
The early Mongols, on the other hand, played a simple polo-like game with sticks and a round object. The round object was not a ball, but the head of a fallen combat enemy. The object of the Mongols' game was to advance the head and knock it into a goal. (Don't give those Serbs ideas!)
The competition between Mokuleia and Waimanalo isn't quite that fierce. But then again, don't expect either to win the Nobel Peace Prize this year.
Since McGregor and a few pals split from the Mokuleia club seven seasons ago, the distance between Waimanalo and Mokuleia has seemed more like Washington D.C. and Baghdad. It didn't help that members at Waimanalo tended to also be members of the American Bar Association and members at Mokuleia tended to also be members of the American Medical Association. But they were civil about it. They played on Saturdays at Waimanalo and on Sundays at Mokuleia. Never did the twain meet. That, like a lot of other things, has changed this year.
The changes came about when the Dailey family, polo patriarchs of Oahu, lost their lease on the field at Mokuleia. Fred Dailey started the club there in 1963 and kept polo alive in Hawaii. When the infamous swindler Ron Rewald "bought" the club and then lost it in 1983, Fred's son, Mike Dailey, came home from running the prestigious Oakbrook Polo Club in Chicago to take over at Mokuleia. A five-goaler who played professionally in Britain and counts the father of Sarah Ferguson, a.k.a. Princess Fergie, among his personal polo pals, Dailey is not only one of the best players in the state, he also brought creative marketing to Hawaii polo. Highly competitive, he didn't play at Waimanalo and didn't even like to talk about the rival club.
But this year, Dailey and wife Becca, one of the most skilled women players in the Pacific, are playing at Waimanalo. Although their home and stables are adjacent to the Mokuleia field, Mike is keeping his ponies at Waimanalo. Masa Noguchi, a Japanese national who has played at Mokuleia for several seasons, now has the lease to run that club. And that explains the addition of "International" to the name. Dailey still owns the name Hawaii Polo Club.
Noguchi, not so incidentally, is an herbalist by trade. When he took a hard spill from his horse during a match, one of the many doctors playing at the time rushed to his aid. Noguchi, who doesn't trust modern medicine, waved the doc away. "I can heal myself!" he said.
Despite the politics, and despite both Oahu clubs now playing games on Sunday afternoons, attendance at both fields has been strong since the current season began in March.
"Our crowds are definitely up," says Ebinger at Waimanalo.
"We haven't seen any difference, lots of people," says Jansen at Mokuleia.
The game's popularity in hi-tech urbanized Hawaii is that it hearkens back to another, simpler time. Not as far back as Ghengis Khan and his head-bangers, but at least back to a time when horses were not as puzzling to men as a French bathroom fixture.
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