Meadowbrook Polo Club
Chairmen	Luis Rinaldini and Bryan Lazarus
Club Professional & Manager	Esteban Scott
Club PR & Sponsorship	Elizabeth Hedley

The Meadowbrook Polo Club is the oldest continuously operating polo

Polo

Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Sometimes called, "The Sport of Kings", it was highly popularized by the British. Players score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a...

 club in the United States. It was first established in 1881 and was home to the 1994 US Open Polo Championship.

History

The history of Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

 polo began in 1879 when several members of the Meadowbrook Polo Club including Thomas Hitchcock, Sr., Oliver W. Bird, August Belmont, Jr.

August Belmont, Jr.

August Belmont, Jr. was an American financier, the builder of New York's Belmont Park racetrack, and a major owner/breeder of thoroughbred racehorses.-Early life:...

 and Benjamin Nicoll started to play the game in the infield of the racetrack of the Mineola Fair Grounds. The Club was formally incorporated in 1881 and the first official polo field was built in 1884.

The most important national event was the annual Open which was held at Meadowbrook from 1923 until 1953. Teams such as Meadowbrook, Great Neck, the Hurricanes, Templeton, Greentree and Old Westbury played on the fields with riders as Tommy Hitchcock

Tommy Hitchcock

Thomas Hitchcock, Jr. was an American polo player who was killed in an air crash during World War II. He was inducted into the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame.-Biography:...

, Michael Phipps, Stewart Iglehart, Laddie Stanford, James Watson Webb, Sr.

James Watson Webb, Sr.

-Biography:He was born in 1884 to Lila Osgood Vanderbilt Webb and William Seward Webb in Burlington, Vermont. He married Electra Havemeyer Webb and had as his son, James Watson Webb, Jr. He died in 1960.-References:...

, Devereux Milburn

Devereux Milburn

Devereux Milburn was an American champion polo player in the early to mid twentieth century. He was one of what was known as the Big Four in international polo, winning the Westchester Cup six times...

 and Winston Guest

Winston Frederick Churchill Guest

-Biography:Winston Guest was the son of Frederick Guest, a British politician, and his wife, Amy Phipps, who was the daughter of American businessman and philanthropist Henry Phipps, Jr. Guest was born in 1906. He won the International Polo Cup in 1930, 1936 and 1939. He died in 1982 at Nassau...

.

The crowds were large for the major events such as the national Open and the international matches. For the 1926 Open, over 30,000 fans came to see Laddie Stanford's Hurricanes against Argentina. And the Westchester Cup matches (United States vs. England) of 1924, 1927 and 1930 drew as many as 45,000 spectators while the three-game 1928 Cup of the Americas, (United States vs. Argentina), drew over 100,000 people, including an astounding 25,000 for a Tuesday match.
The excitement of a major polo match was vividly captured by writer Damon Runyon

Damon Runyon

Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...

, who attended one of the 1930 Westchester Club Cup games:

Though the game didn't start until 4 pm, the Long Island roads leading to Meadow Brook were clogged with traffic from early afternoon. Thousands of motorists used the parkway, which you can travel at the cost of a dollar and go as far as you please. Special trains on the Long Island Railroad unloaded packed cars at the gates of Meadowbrook where the mob of hustlers and souvenir vendors that follow every big Eastern sporting event were kicking up the dust. Acres of automobiles were parked in the area, some as far as a mile from the field ... As early as 1 pm, there were little picnic parties spread out on the grass behind the stands, munching hard-boiled eggs, ham sandwich

Ham sandwich

The ham sandwich is a common type of sandwich. It is made by putting sliced ham between two slices of bread. The bread may be toasted and buttered.- History :...

es and what-not. Chiefly, what-not ... There was a grand entrance before the game, just like a circus. The ponies were led past the stands, all saddled and bridled, their legs swathed in bandages ... The Panama hat

Panama hat

A Panama hat is a traditional brimmed hat of Ecuadorian origin that is made from the plaited leaves of the toquilla straw plant...

 and white flannel trousers survived among the males, although it is September, and a lot of the gals clung to their sports clothes.”

World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 brought top-flight polo at Meadowbrook to an abrupt end. After a brief recovery, the original Meadowbrook Club in 1954 became a casualty of the building of the Meadowbrook Parkway and postwar suburbanization. The club relocated to a smaller facility in Jericho, New York

Jericho, New York

Jericho is a hamlet in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2010 Census, the CDP population was 13,567. The area is served by the Jericho Union Free School District, the boundaries of which differ somewhat from those of the hamlet...

 and then, in 1968, the fields were again sold for development. The Meadowbrook polo players established a new club in Old Westbury, New York

Old Westbury, New York

Old Westbury is a village in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 4,671....

.

Over the last couple of decades, the amount and quality of play has steadily progressed, attracting an ever increasing number of players (including a steadily growing contingent of women) and spectators. Much of the credit for the initial revitalization of Meadowbrook was owed to Al Bianco, the then club chairman, his wife Barbara and to the late Peter Henderson, Sr. Their involvement, along with those of scores of supporters, culminated in the United States Polo Association

United States Polo Association

The United States Polo Association is the national governing body for the sport of polo in the United States since 1890. The USPA provides resources to approximately 3600 individual members and 250 polo clubs across the U.S. and Canada, including coordinating and supervising professional polo...

 awarding the club the prestigious Open Championship in 1994 and 1995. These two Opens were among the finest played in the post-war years and the 1994 final match arguably ranks as the most memorable and exciting ever. In more recent years the Club’s continued renaissance has been attributable to the ceaseless efforts of its current Chairmen, Luis Rinaldini and Brian Lazarus.