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F O U R S O M E O F F R I E N D S
The last time the US Open handicap was played at 22 goals in 1971,
it was won by an all amateur team, reflects Brad Scherer
The USPA’s decision to lower the handicap
levels of the 2019 US Open (and its
associated high-goal tournaments) to 22
goals has, among other impacts, generated
an impressive increase in the number
of teams competing for this year’s ‘USPA
Gauntlet of Polo’. Not since the early 1970s
has the US Open been limited to 22 goals.
And, because today’s polo is so dominated
by professionals, a noteworthy pause
is deserved to reflect back to when the
US Open was last 22 goals, and, perhaps
one of the very few times it was ever won
by an all-amateur team.
In 1971, at the heralded Oak Brook
Sports Core and Polo complex, the 22-goal
Oak Brook team – consisting of the
all-amateur foursome of Hugo Dalmar Jr,
(4 goals), Charles Smith (6 goals), Allan
Scherer (6 goals) and Robert “Bobby”
Beveridge (6 goals) – defeated other
professionally staffed and organised squads
to take the US Open Championship. The
Oak Brook four were business professionals,
not professional athletes. Dalmar Jr headed
a major Chicago insurance concern, Smith
was an aerospace engineer from Texas,
Scherer was a real estate broker from
California and Beveridge was a rancher
from Texas. All were great polo players
who loved the game, for the game.
Polo has many enduring lures: the
love of and for horses, the intense desire
to compete and win, and the camaraderie
that can, on rare occasions, magically
synchronise to yield a sum much greater
than the individual parts. The 1971 Oak
Brook had all of this rare and unique
chemistry. It did not have professional
athletes, it certainly did not have as many
horses or the resources of the other
professionally staffed teams, but they had the
will to win and the desire to play hard for
the love of the game and for each other.
When I recently asked Charles what he
recalled as the most important aspect of this
team’s success, he simply said: ‘It was their
close friendship that banded them together’.
Here’s to how things were when the
US Open was last 22 goals, and to hoping
it can be that way many times again.
From left:
William Atkinson,
Hugo Dalmar Jr., Charles Smith,
Jorie Butler, Allan Scherer,
Bobby Beveridge, Clarence Starks
