Polo, Belle Haven’s quarry and the Motherlode
Many Sundays from June through early September, Greenwich offers something only Greenwich could offer: polo matches.
Come 2 p.m. on designated Sundays, crowds of children, adults, dogs and babies suddenly amass, and Conyers Farms becomes “Downton Abbey.”
Last Sunday, the Greenwich Polo club hosted the East Coast Open — and as usual, the Haft family had no clue what was going on.
My husband, Ian, and I had gone the night before to a “Party at the Quarry” — because, apparently Belle Haven has a quarry — and, trust me, that quarry has quite a party. Thus getting our kids — and ourselves — awake early for two hours of Russian Math wasn’t easy. But it was gorgeous weather, and I was determined to get everyone outside all day.
“Meet us at polo,” Louie’s friend Instagramed him at noon.
As it turns out, one of the only ways to tear my 11yearold son away from his iPhone is to deliver him to the land of straw hats, crudité and jodhpurs at our local polo grounds. Who knew?
Logistics proved challenging; younger son George’s soccer game was at the same time as the polo match. I had to cheer George on, in part because he was the only kid on the team without a uniform — because I forgot to order it.
“OK babe — change of plans,” I told Ian, who was still recovering from persuading a 10yearold and an 8yearold to get out of bed for two hours of Sovietbloc mathematics.
“I need you to take Louie to polo,” I said.
“Polo?” he asked, with a notable lack of enthusiasm.
“That Conyers Farm thing,” was my reply.
When Ian and I first arrived in Greenwich, we were invited to a polo match by a neighbor who we were convinced was a Russian oligarch. He was very charming, very scary and someone you did not want to say no to. His house had a moat.
The oligarch had a VIP tent at the Greenwich Polo Club grounds. There were a lot of mildly famous people in jodhpurs, and lots of champagne.
“If you see Putin, run,” I told Ian.
Instead we spent a lovely afternoon walking around the field, where families brought picnic baskets and lawn chairs for the afternoon. It was a total Greenwich scene and the idea that families — many of whom we knew — had made polo a Sunday tradition was both charming and terrifying. So was the game itself. I had never seen a match live before; Brooklyn didn’t rock that scene. But now we were in Greenwich, and suddenly I was yelling as two horses practically fell over each other at full gallop in pursuit of a polo ball. There was a point when another horse practically tumbled into the picnic crowds, while a player swung his mallet like a warrior over his head. It was riveting.
“It’s so violent,” I remarked later to a British friend on the phone. She grew up with that tallyho thing in England.
“Oh yes,” she said. “They used to use their enemies’ heads as balls.”
No wonder the hedge fund capital of the world was into it.
But Ian wasn’t.
“I am not going to a polo match, Claire,” he informed me.
The Greenwich Polo Club website had prices listed from $40 per car for lawn seating, $60 per car for grandstand seating, $100 for West Lawn seating, $300 for box seats and $600 for private cabanas — but all of the tickets appeared to be sold out.
Where’s an oligarch when you need him?
But nothing would deter me from getting Louie out in the sun, so I dropped him at the field by that weird sculpture that looks remotely like a log of poop, where his friends would meet him, while I raced back to George at the soccer pitch.
I did not have time to absorb how outofplace I looked. This would come later, when I returned to the polo field. That’s when it dawned on me that I hadn’t changed since the night before and was still dressed for the quarry. I’ll spare you what that looked like, but I had to run across the field to meet Louie at a break in the game and my friend said I looked like I had been hired to entertain the crowd.
“Remember that game ‘Shoot the Freak’ at Coney Island?” she said.
I was informed that my friend was “the one in the huge hat” — which proved problematic, as everyone was in a large hat. So I ran up and down the field in confusion solo, prolonging the freak entertainment situation.
But as the game got going and the third ambulance made its way onto the field for another horrific accident, there I was again in full polo mode. Yes, my version was more Roman arena than “Downton Abbey,” but I loved it. Isn’t that just like Greenwich?