Along the Sideboards
By Alex Webbe
March 23, 2009
The high-goal season has been ramping up with just a little over a month of competition left. The semifinals of the USPA Piaget Gold Cup have been set with Audi playing Black Watch on Wednesday, March 25 at 10:30am followed by a Lechuza-Pony Express meeting at 5pm.
While the polo season is in full swing in
The Hobe Sound Polo Club is doing everything in its power to battle the economy by staging exhibition matches on its fields. The US Westchester Cup team used the field for early practices and a couple of youth matches have taken place there.
Hoping that cash purses will encourage participation in area tournaments Steve Orthwein’s Port Mayaca Polo Club is preparing for its $15,000 14-goal Live Oak Challenge Cup finals between Audi and La Herradura.
The third Martin county polo operation at Sunlight Ranch recently hosted a Friday afternoon Annual Family and Friends Invitational.
Further north at The Villages, the polo club has begun its regular season on the heels of the highly successful Camacho Cup international match between
The club has recently unveiled architect’s renderings of the stables they will be building this year in an effort to more fully answer the needs of visiting players and teams. A new polo manager in Santiago Perdomo will be supervising a low to medium goal program; an impressive resident pro in the legendary Carlos Gracida and the assistance of Alejandro Battro, an Argentine-based agronomist who was brought in to set up a long-term plan to improve the quality of the fields.
Battro and his engineers manage over 400 polo fields in 24 countries in North and South America, Europe and
America’s highest rated female player, Sunny Hale, recently arrived in town and will be busy organizing the Women’s Championship Tournament finals which are scheduled to be played on the grounds of the International Polo Club, April 1-5.