Aiken Polo Club History

by Pam Gleason

By the late 1800s, Aiken was famous throughout the South as a health resort. Not only did it attract many seasonal visitors from the coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia, it also brought in hundreds of winter travelers from the North. Aiken’s climate was deemed especially healthful, and the city was home to numerous tuberculosis sanitoriums. People who were ill (or afraid of becoming ill) would come South to strengthen themselves in the mild air under a healing Aiken sun.

In the early 1880s, healthy and vigorous members of the most prestigious Northeastern families discovered that Aiken also provided an ideal locale for outdoor athletic pursuits throughout the winter months. They soon established a Winter Colony in the city. They would come down on the train in November, pursue outdoor activities with a vengeance until April, then pack up and migrate back north.

In those years, horse sports were particularly in vogue. Polo, an ancient sport introduced to members of High Society in New York City in 1876, was slowly making its way across the country. Aiken’s first game was organized by Captain Clarence Southerland Wallace, a New Yorker and an executive of the Havemeyer Sugar Company. The first game took place on today’s Whitney Field off Mead Avenue. According to the March 27, 1882 edition of the Charleston News and Courier, this game was a gala affair attended by about ten thousand spectators.

Gay parties of ladies and gentlemen mounted on prancing steeds dashed over the countryside enjoying the delightful surroundings . . . . Sumptuous luncheons were served. . .The crack military company the Aiken Palmetto Rifles, entertained with dress parades, but all this paled in significance before the brilliant and successful introduction of James Gordon Bennett’s popular national game, polo. It has caused a great sensation and revolutionized the city as far as amusements are concerned.

Not much is known about the very earliest years of polo in the city, but by the 1890s, it was a well-established and popular pastime. Prominent Aikenites who took up the sport initially included Aiken’s mayor as well as numerous winter residents from New York, Baltimore, New Jersey and Boston. Most historians credit the development of polo in the city to the Hitchcock family, who summered on Long Island and wintered in Aiken. Thomas Hitchcock, Sr. was one of the first 10-goalers in America and a member of America’s original international polo squad in 1886. His wife, Louise “Lulie” Hitchcock, considered the mother of American polo, played herself, encouraged others to take up the sport and organized and coached fast and furious junior games of both horse and bicycle polo. Many young players nurtured in Mrs. Hitchcock’s junior programs went on to become the premier players in the country. The Hitchcocks’ son, Tommy Hitchcock, a 10-goal international superstar, was the most famous player in America before World War II. Today, his name is synonymous with polo greatness. He was also, incidentally, a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and is said to be the inspiration behind the character Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.

For many years, Aiken was the acknowledged polo center of the South. Great numbers of high-ranked players came to spend the winter, competing daily on the 16 fields the city offered. Horse trainer Fred Post arrived in Aiken in the early 1910s and soon had as many as 100 horses in training, along with a stable full of young players to work them. Polo dominated the Aiken sports scene, and poloists who practiced in Aiken went on to represent the United States in many international matches. Famous players included the Hitchcocks, the Bostwicks, the Gerrys, the Posts, the Knoxes, the von Stades, the Igleharts, Alan Corey Jr., Harry Payne Whitney, Jimmy Mills, Russell Grace, Jules Rompf, Devereux Milburn and Louis E. Stoddard. It was the Golden Age of American polo, and Aiken was at the center of it all.

 

World War II dealt a severe blow to polo everywhere. During the conflict, Aiken’s women’s teams held charity matches to raise money for war bonds. After the war, regular polo resumed on Aiken’s fields under the auspices of the Knox, Bostwick and Corey families. Society was changing, however, and as the years passed, polo in America was in decline and Aiken Polo along with it. Many of the illustrious players from before the war retired or passed away, and fewer members of the next generations stayed with polo. Old clubs near big cities were overtaken by development. Aiken still had Whitney Field and the complex of fields on Powderhouse Road and a group of families upheld Aiken’s polo tradition, but it was only a shadow of what it had been in earlier years.

By the mid-1970s, polo was coming back across America. Players from other parts of the country moved to Aiken, joining the descendants of players from the Golden Age and encouraging others to take up the sport. By 1982, the centennial year of polo in Aiken, the club was on the upswing. Tom Biddle (now Chairman of the United States Polo Association), David Widener and Gene Kneece, wanting to play with their sons, helped develop a new polo program on Aiken’s historic fields. Tom and Gene’s sons, Tommy Biddle and Tiger Kneece, matured into top professionals, bringing their talents to clubs around the country.

Things really heated up in the 1990s when Owen Rinehart and Adam Snow, two of America’s best players, bought property outside town and established the Langdon Road Club to hold medium and high goal matches. Soon, horseman Dan McCarthy set up a green horse training operation nearby. Then Russ McCall and Matias Magrini established the New Bridge Polo and Country Club, bringing with them more high goal polo. Aiken’s season found itself on the calendars of high caliber players and teams, and Aiken became the place to play in the spring and fall; a stopping point between the winter clubs in Florida and the summer clubs in the Northeast, West and Midwest. Polo players of all levels began to look to Aiken as a new polo Mecca, a place where the polo is plentiful, the weather is warm and the company is congenial.

Today, Aiken County boasts nine separate clubs recognized by the United States Polo Association and about 40 fields, many of them of the best quality. Polo is an essential part of the city because, as 10-goaler Devereux Milburn remarked many years ago, “so many people who love horses naturally are attracted to Aiken.” This attraction is still as great as it was in Milburn’s day. The polo community is growing steadily, with more polo players buying property in the area every year. With its distinguished history and its current popularity, Aiken Polo’s future has never looked brighter, and Whitney Field, the oldest polo field in continuous use in the United States, promises to hold its place as the focal point of Aiken’s Sunday afternoons for many years to come.