Player, Given he is Left-Handed.”)
The players are pretty well-protected.
Meredith’s polo boots are heavy reinforced leather
up to her knees – “like storm trooper boots,” she
said. They’re made in Argentina by the House of
Casablanca, the Nike of polo.
Polo boots for women are only beginning to
make Casablanca’s standard product line. “I
was just lucky to find a narrow-enough pair,”
Meredith laughed.
They wear elbow guards and knee guards
for obvious reasons – the ball is a hard plastic
sphere going top speed and mallets are flying
around, too – and the polo helmet (more of a
cap, actually), is meant primarily to deflect the
ball from causing serious head injury. Meredith
said goggles and face masks are becoming more
regulation equipment.
“Goggles are still optional, but almost everyone
wears them – clear or tinted – to protect against
the ball, a mallet or a chunk of dirt flying up in
your face,” she said.
The Polo Club is anxious to spread the word.
A May evening exhibition match on The Great
Lawn on Louisville’s waterfront drew a couple-
hundred people.
It wasn’t the ideal setting, of course. Meredith
pointed out that not only was the grass in the field
kind of high (regulation polo fields are almost
like putting greens), and the land sloped, but
the Ohio River was at one end of the field and
I-64 was at the other. So instead of the regulation
hard-plastic ball, a softer leather ball that looked
almost like a small soccer ball was used, so it
didn’t go as far or as fast. Still, the crowd was
engaged, and that was encouraging.
“We’d love to have people come out and get
excited about polo,” Meredith said. Though the
club plays twice every weekend, and now at
Oxmoor Farms all the time (they used to play
some of their games at Hardscuffle Farm in
Prospect), the matches start at various times – late
morning or early afternoon – depending on the
weather – and interested people are advised to
follow the club’s Facebook page, Lou Polo. “We
don’t have a web site yet, but we’re working on it.”
The weekend matches are free, but there are
also a couple of ticketed events during the year:
the annual Sophisticated Living Polo Series
World Cup and the annual Virgil Christian tribute
match that benefits Maryhurst and its various
programs for severely traumatized children. The
Virgil Christian event is organized by the Boland
family (Boland Maloney Lumber), sort of the first
family of polo in Louisville.
If you want to get a sense of polo Ralph
Lauren-style, the Sophisticated Living afternoon
is somewhat horsey, with Southern brunch
buffet, cocktails, tents, trophies and a Land
Rover/Audi/Porsche tailgating competition
“with fabulous prizes.”
But if you just want to get a sense of polo as
a fast, exciting, everyman’s sport, Oxmoor on a
weekend afternoon in the summer is your best
bet. The game may not make entire sense to you
right away, but that will come.
In the meantime, the horses are fantastic.
2017 Networking
on the Green
Golf Scramble
Friday, June 23rd
Fuzzy Zoeller's Covered Bridge
Golf Club
12510 Covered Bridge Rd.
Sellersburg, IN 47172
Morning & Afternoon Flights
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