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Eagerly seeking out this big-ticket clientele, corporate sponsors like Rolex, BMW and even Harrah's Trump Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., have jumped in and ponied up backing for teams and tournaments. This year Shearson Lehman/ American Express put $250,000 into sponsoring polo, says Marketing Director Cathy Stewart, "because it is changing from an elite to an upscale audience." TV has come acovering. The first major network broadcast, of a Long Island tournament, will be shown on NBC-TV in three weeks. And the sport has its own magazine.
"There still is that high-tea image that the game has," says Polo Magazine Managing Editor Tim Sayles, "yet perhaps half if not more of the membership of USPA is working people. There is a heavy dose of cowboy influence in polo today, which is the direct opposite of the aristocratic image of the game. A lot of the really good players are Texans and Oklahomans." Palm Beach, of course, remains the game's winter Elysium, but even there the fabled fields of the Royal Palm have been joined in the past seven years by two less stodgy polo clubs. In fact, the exclusivity of the game appears to have completely escaped some of polo's newer converts. Says Dick Laird, 34, an investment banker from Washington who took up the sport two years ago: "My friends think we're out here with Rolls-Royces in the parking lot, but it's closer to rodeo. When you get right down to it, what's so elite about being knee-deep in horse dung?" --By Jamie Murphy. Reported by Barbara Kraft/Los Angeles and Sue Raffety/New York, with other bureaus