The short answer: In 2021 and 2022, I set out to visit every polo club in the United States as a playing member of the U.S. Polo Association. I contacted clubs in more than 35 states, from Florida to Hawaii, and played, rode, toured, or watched polo at dozens of them. The biggest lesson: a club is its people. The field matters less than whether someone answers your message and puts you on a good horse.
How the tour started
In February 2021, during one of the worst freezes in Texas history, I packed everything I owned into my Honda Civic and drove from Houston to Florida for the winter polo season. I trained at Sarasota Polo Club under my coach, Scott Lancaster, until the Florida season ended in May, when it gets too hot for the horses.
The season doesn't end everywhere at once. It moves north. So I followed it. The website said there were about 180 polo clubs in America, and I had just played the first one. I decided to try to play all of them, and I called it the American Polo Club Tour.
Why I did it
I wanted to answer the questions I couldn't find answered anywhere. Are the people at this club welcoming? What are the fields and clubhouses like? Is it fun and safe to play a chukker here? What does it feel like to be part of this community? I had wanted to put down roots in a club for years, and as someone who never stays in one place for long, I wanted to see them all before I chose.
The tour also raised money for Work to Ride, the Philadelphia nonprofit that has used horses and polo to work with city kids since 1994. And every club I visited was offered a free business strategy consultation from my agency, Unrth, because most clubs I know are run on passion and very thin margins.
How I reached the clubs
I sent every club a short email. I introduced myself as a playing USPA member who had just finished the winter season at Sarasota, said I was trying to visit every club in America, and asked one question: what's the best way to visit your club? I offered to pick up a chukker, stick and ball, or just watch.
Then I followed up by text, Instagram, Facebook, and phone, often all four. Some clubs wrote back right away. Some never answered at all. I wrote up everything I learned about getting a game as a visitor in how to play polo when you travel.
What I learned
Welcome is everything, and it varies wildly
At Virginia Beach Polo Club, Bart gave me a full tour, comped my stick and ball, and invited me to dinner. In Louisiana, the New Orleans Polo Club sent me home with a hat and a jersey. Poway Polo Club in San Diego wrote about my visit in their newsletter. Other clubs are private, family farms, or simply closed to the public, and that's their right. A few never replied to a single message.
Instagram beats email
The clubs that answered fastest were the ones I messaged on Instagram or texted directly. Many clubs post their game schedules on Instagram and nowhere else.
The season migrates, and so do the players
Florida and the California desert in winter. The North, the Midwest, and the mountains in summer. In the fall, club after club told me some version of "everyone is in Aiken now." I mapped it in when is polo season in the US.
Polo people find clever ways to make it affordable
In Jackson Hole, players share about ten pros to keep the costs down. In Big Horn, Wyoming, a player told me the grass is so good you only need to feed hay three months a year. In San Diego, I played a chukker for $30. (In the Santa Ynez Valley, a chukker cost $500. Both were worth it.) The real prices are in how much it costs to play polo.
The horses make the memory
I still think about Griffin, the steady stick-and-ball horse at Palm City Polo Club in Florida, and Macho, the fast, smooth, hard-to-stop horse I rode for two chukkers in New Mexico.
It's harder than it looks
Driving, coordinating, playing, and running my business at the same time wore me down. Halfway up the East Coast I fainted and fell down a flight of stairs. That story, and why I didn't go home, is in The Dip.
The clubs, region by region
Trying to find a game and a horse in a new town, over and over, is exactly the problem PoloFlow solves. Polo, wherever you are. Join the waitlist at poloflow.com.
