American poloist J Watson Webb II
bowed to just one man in his life,
according to his grandson Sam. The man
was His Majesty King George V, and the
year was 1921, when America’s new ‘big
four’ sailed to London to play on the
hallowed turf of the old Hurlingham Polo
Grounds, bound and determined to win
the first Westchester International Cup
since the Great War.
It had been seven years since the great
Leslie Cheape and the Brits shocked the
Americans on their own soil and regained
possession of the coveted Westchester Cup
in 1914, ending the run of America’s famed
‘big four’. It was at Hurlingham in 1909
where the Americans had won their first
International Cup, which began a three-
match hold on the coveted trophy.
The scourge of war had ended such
frivolities. ‘The editor of the volume on polo
in the
British Sports and Sportsmen
series
describes it thus,’ noted author Nigel À
Brassard. ‘By the close of 1918, emerged an
FRIENDLY FOES
Joshua Casper recounts how the International Cup Challenge of 1921 marked the dawn
of a golden age of sporting competition on one of polo’s historic grounds
England where the grim reaper had gathered
with no sparing hand from the very flower
of sportsmen.’
In June 1914, the British were in the States
playing polo, and in August, the Great War
broke out. Captain Cheape fell on the
battlefield in 1916, as did a generation of
young men, and British polo was torn asunder
by the horror of war. The HPA even delayed
the International Challenge for a year in 1920
due to a lack of horses. All but one of the men
who played in 1921 had seen action in the war.
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