Polo | History, Rules & Equipment (2024)

polo, game played on horseback between two teams of four players each who use mallets with long, flexible handles to drive a wooden ball down a grass field and between two goal posts. It is the oldest of equestrian sports.

History.

A game of Central Asian origin, polo was first played in Persia (Iran) at dates given from the 6th century bc to the 1st century ad. Polo was at first a training game for cavalry units, usually the king’s guard or other elite troops. To the warlike tribesmen, who played it with as many as 100 to a side, it was a miniature battle.

In time polo became a Persian national sport played extensively by the nobility. Women as well as men played the game, as indicated by references to the queen and her ladies engaging King Khosrow II Parvīz and his courtiers in the 6th century ad.

From Persia the game spread to Arabia, then to Tibet (the English word polo is the Balti word meaning “ball”), to China, and to Japan. In China (910) the death of a favoured relative in a game prompted Emperor A-pao-chi to order the beheading of all surviving players.

Polo was introduced into India by the Muslim conquerors in the 13th century; but, although the game had been described in Sir Anthony Sherley’s Travels to Persia (1613), the first Europeans to play the game were British tea planters in Assam, who formed the first European polo club in 1859 at Silchar. The Calcutta Polo Club was formed in the early 1860s. Polo spread rapidly after a captain in the 10th Hussars stationed in India saw a match early in 1866 and immediately formed a team from among his fellow officers. Before the year ended, informal matches were held between British cavalry units stationed in India. In 1869 a challenge round was held between the 10th Hussars and the 9th Lancers in England. At this time there were eight men to a side and almost no rules. Polo grew rapidly in England, with matches at Richmond Park and Hurlingham attracting more than 10,000 spectators by 1875. After it had been introduced by the military, the sport of polo remained popular with them but also spread to the universities and was popular with the nobility and royalty.

In 1876, the sportsman and newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett saw his first polo game and introduced it in the United States. Later that year informal games were being played in New York City and by 1877 at Jerome Park racetrack in Westchester County, N.Y., where the Westchester Polo Club was founded in this latter year. In 1881 the Meadow Brook Club was formed in Long Island, N.Y., by such early outstanding players as Thomas Hitchco*ck, Sr., August Belmont, and Benjamin Nicoll. The size of the team was reduced to five and then, in 1881 in the United States and in 1883 in England, to four, the present number. Though the rules of the Hurlingham Club of England (which was founded in 1886) were at first used in the United States, in 1888 a system of handicapping players was devised to equalize tournament play. The Polo Association (later the United States Polo Association) was founded in 1890 and standardized the rules. Polo spread throughout the country, although the game long remained one for the rich because of the expense of acquiring and maintaining a stable of polo ponies. Outside the United States, the game’s governing body is the Hurlingham Polo Association, which maintains relations with many national bodies.

International competition.

The first international competition took place in 1886 when the United States unsuccessfully challenged the English, then the undisputed world leaders in polo, for the Westchester Cup. England defended the Cup successfully in 1902, but the United States won in 1909. The Cup was contested nine additional times (the last in 1939), with the Americans winning each time except in 1914. The next international meeting was in 1971, when the United States defeated England for the Coronation Cup, a single-game rather than a three-game match, thereafter held annually.

After 1909 the style of the game changed from the relatively slow English form of play characterized by short, controlled hitting. American polo players used a long-hitting, fast-moving, wide-open style that revolutionized the sport. The rules of the two countries were eventually assimilated, the United States adopting the English rule permitting a player to hook an opponent’s stick with his mallet, while the English abandoned their offside rule that forbade players preceding the ball.

From 1909 to 1950 the United States was supreme in polo. Through the 1920s and ’30s polo became increasingly popular in Argentina, and in 1928 the first Copa de las Americas (Cup of the Americas) was contested between the United States and Argentina. Since then Argentina has become the uncontested master of international polo. Polo became the Argentine national game, and crowds exceeded 60,000. International matches commercially sponsored (mainly at Boca Raton, Fla.) were held in the 1970s, and European championships were inaugurated in 1980.

Although in the 20th century it is far from common, British and American women also play polo. In the United States, women compete against women on the collegiate level, and there is a women’s National Handicap competition. Occasionally a woman also acts as the fourth member of an otherwise all-male team.