FOURSOME OF FRIENDS

From left: William Atkinson, Hugo Dalmar Jr., Charles Smith, Jorie Butler, Allan Scherer, Bobby Beveridge, Clarence Starks

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.