Polo is one of those sports that never appealed to the American masses. It’s too expensive. It’s too British. It has a reputation for being elitist and undemocratic. While polo is fashionable in some affluent areas of the country, most Americans just don’t relate. And yet polo caught on in some unlikely places. In the 1920s, the game found a following in the Texas Hill Country.
Polo began in the Middle East and spread to Europe in the 19th century. Two English cavalry teams, using hockey sticks and a billiard ball, played the first polo game in England in 1871. Five years later in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, teams played what may have been the first game of polo in the United States.
The game arrived in Texas in the 1880s when Capt. Glynn Turquand, a retired British military officer who learned to play polo in India, led a contingent of British ex-patriots to San Antonio. The Alamo City, the western terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, became a popular destination for wealthy Englishmen looking for adventure in the American Southwest.
Capt. Turquand bought land near Boerne and built the Balcones Ranch. (The modern-day site is across I-10 from Fair Oaks.) In February 1883, the captain and his fellow Brits met at the ranch and formed the Texas Polo Club. On July 7, 1883, the Texas Polo Club played what many polo historians recognize as the first public polo game in Texas, at San Pedro Springs Park in San Antonio.
The Texans who turned out for the game liked what they saw. Polo, a fast-moving sport, was both graceful and violent. Few rules existed in those days. Riders could do most anything to score a goal or keep an opponent from scoring. But the Texans took exception to the annoying English habit of bragging about their superior horsemanship, especially after a few beers at the Menger Bar. Something had to be done.
Three days after the game at San Pedro Springs Park, some Texans gathered at the office of the Texas Investment Company in San Antonio. They organized the Cowboys Polo Club to take on the British and put them in their proper place. The Cowboys immediately challenged the Brits to a game, anytime, anywhere. The Brits answered with three words: Bring it on. On July 14, 1883, The Texas Polo Club played the Cowboys Polo Club at San Pedro Springs Park for the unofficial Texas polo championship.
Insults flew in both directions prior to the game. The English poked fun at the way the Texans talked. The Texans ridiculed the tiny “baldheaded” English saddles and the silly way the riders popped up and down when they rode.
The Texans talked big, but the odds favored the British. Those Texans could ride, but polo is more than horsemanship. Striking a ball with a mallet while riding a polo pony at full gallop could be difficult and dangerous. The Texans played with gusto, but they hit each other as often as they hit the ball. The Brits won the game 3-1.
From those beginnings, the game spread to the military bases in San Antonio. In those days the army traveled and sometimes fought on horseback. Polo proved to be an excellent way to prepare men and horses for the rigors of military life. Officers at Fort Sam Houston gained a reputation as some of the best polo players in the country.
On June 18, 1923, two polo teams from Fort Sam Houston traveled through Fredericksburg on the way to Denver. The teams played an exhibition game at the Gillespie County Fairgrounds. Polo found an audience that day in Fredericksburg. But polo in Gillespie County really took off when W. L. Burke, a polo player from Houston, and his friend Dr. Victor Keidel, formed the Fredericksburg Polo Club in 1926. Fredericksburg became the smallest town in the country with a club sanctioned by the American Polo Association.
Soon other Hill Country towns caught the polo bug. On May 22, 1926, the Fredericksburg Polo Club played Stonewall on a bumpy field at the old Gillespie County Fairgrounds. Fredericksburg beat Stonewall 11 to 9 in a game that lasted 1 hour and 35 minutes. Other teams formed in Cherokee, Brady, Junction, Menard, Rocksprings and Mason. The Hill Country teams played games and tournaments during the spring and summer.
As the 1926 Gillespie County Fair approached, the local polo club petitioned fair directors to include polo in the festivities. The club volunteered to level the field inside the racetrack if it could use the area for polo. The directors accepted. That August, polo became a featured event at the Gillespie County Fair.
Llano played polo as early as 1923. A trio of men from Llano County, Cecil Smith, Rube Williams and York Ratliff became world-class players. Llano County earned a solid reputation for its polo players and its breeding and training of polo ponies.
Even as polo spread across western Texas the game retained a strong British flavor. A fancy dinner followed many polo games where participants raised their glasses of champagne and toasted the Queen of England as well as the President of the United States.
The popularity of the game produced a shortage of quality polo ponies. English horses of the early 20th century tended to be overgrown, slow and not well-suited for the game. East Coast American horses proved a better fit. Then the British polo players around San Antonio saw the potential of Texas mustangs. With proper training, the rugged, athletic, agile and sure-footed mustangs of the Hill Country made excellent polo ponies. They learned to follow the ball and to maneuver in response to pressure from the riders’ knees as much as a tug on the reins.
San Antonio, the hub of Texas polo and the gateway to the Hill Country, brought polo and the mustang together. Soon polo players and their agents from all over the country converged on Narciso Leal’s Livestock Exchange at 226 Dolorosa Street to buy Texas mustangs trained for polo, many of them from Kendall, Gillespie, Llano, McCullough and San Saba Counties.
By 1930 the Fredericksburg Polo Club fielded two teams: the Bootleggers and the Crapshooters. The teams played at the old fairgrounds and at the polo field at the Temple D. Smith Airport, until the Great Depression hit and the popularity of polo declined. The sport seemed pretentious and extravagant at a time when many Americans couldn’t find work and didn’t have enough to eat.
But polo still has a following in Texas. The sport is popular and quietly fashionable in certain affluent areas of San Antonio and the Hill Country where men and women admire fine horses and appreciate horsemanship.