Sport: Polo Rankings

With little or no prospect of international polo in the U. S. next summer, last week’s annual meeting of the U. S. Polo Association was one of the quietest on record. After re-electing last year’s officers, the Association accepted the recommendations of the Handicap Committee, which left only 15 U. S. poloists ranked in the ”internationalist” class (seven goals or more). Highest, of course, was Thomas Hitchcock Jr., who has been one of the world’s three ten-goal players since 1922.* Sport-writers who thought his play had declined were more surprised than poloists, who knew he was as able as ever, when the Handicap Committee left him at ten goals last week. Hitchcock’s pre-eminence was emphasized by the fact that no one in the U. S. was judged good enough to get into the class just below him. Tall Winston Guest, who was out of play most of the season with a broken collarbone, and Eric Pedley of Riverside, Calif., who in 1930 was the first Far-Westerner to be selected for an international team, dropped from nine goals to eight. Earl A. S. Hopping dropped from eight to seven, four seven-goal players went down to six. Highest ranking players promoted were three five-goal men raised to six. among them Yale’s No. 1 player Michael G. (“Mike”) Phipps.

* Other ten-goal players are Capt. Charles Thomas Irvine Roark (No. 3) of Great Britain, Lewis Lacey (back) of Argentina.

† Where racing resumed last fortnight with reduced stakes and admission fees, when Governor Augustin Olachea of Lower California consented not to increase taxes on racing.