Field of Dreams

A historical look back at the sport of kings and the legendary lawns of the Santa Barbara Polo Club

Spectators enjoying polo in the 1930s.

By Joan Tapper
Photographs courtesy of the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club

Every Sunday afternoon from April through October, just inland from Highway 101 in Carpinteria, you can see eight riders wearing white breeches and colorful jerseys, helmets and polished riding boots. They gallop across a manicured field in a dazzling display of horsemanship, athletic skill, and hard-driving competition while family and friends watch from the grandstands and grooms tend horses on the sidelines. It’s a festive scene: tailgate picnics beforehand, mid-game interludes when spectators stamp down divots in the grass, and postmatch socializing. 

This summer, the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club—the third oldest in the United States—celebrates 104 years of larger-than-life characters, triumphs and losses, family ties, desperate times, and new heights of achievement.

A team stands ready to play.

Inside the vintage clubhouse, the hunter-green walls are lined with decades’ worth of photos of teams accepting the silver cups, bowls, and trophies locked in glass-fronted cases. The club’s story, however, predates the building,
the trophies, and even the adjacent fields. It begins on April 18, 1894, when Santa Barbara’s first exhibition polo match took place at the foot of a Garden Street racetrack as part of a spring flower festival. 

Gradually, a local contingent managed to learn the game, which had its roots in Central Asia. Polo owes its modern form and popularity, though, to mid-19th-century British Army officers who learned to play in India and subsequently brought their skills home to England. By 1902, Santa Barbara had its own club with 40 members who played for hundreds of spectators. In those early days, there were enough serious riders—including the town’s mayor, Dr. Elmer Boeseke—to have the group recognized by the United States Polo Association in 1911, marking the official birth of the Santa Barbara Polo Club.

The years between World War I and World War II were Santa Barbara’s golden age for the sport. The mayor’s son, Elmer “Long Legs” Boeseke Jr., was emerging as a nationally known player, and as teams arrived by train, grooms walked their horses through town to fields from the Mesa and Hope Ranch to Montecito. Max Fleischmann, heir to a Cincinnati yeast company fortune and an avid player, moved to Santa Barbara, where he’d visited while in California during World War I. In 1923, he bought a burnt-out eucalyptus grove and began to put in a polo field. After three years of nurturing the turf, the first chukker was played. In 1928, Fleischmann added an adjoining 40 acres with two partly developed polo fields. Though games were played elsewhere on occasion, the SBPC had found its home.

And what a home it was—backed by mountains and near a beach where horses could be exercised, Fleischmann’s fields were blessed by unparalleled weather. The club’s fashionable social scene drew players from Hollywood and beyond. Will Rogers, Spencer Tracy, Walt Disney, Darryl Zanuck, and Jack Warner all took to the field for Sunday games, as did banker Averell Harriman, who owned an East Coast stable. 

Changes were underway, though, by 1939, when a British team—including future Polo Hall of Famer Robert Skene—played a practice match in Santa Barbara en route to the celebrated Westchester Cup tournament in New York. Fleischmann had already sold off the fields, and after the United States declared war, the club was transferred
to the Jackson family, who would own it for almost two decades. A year later, all play was suspended as soldiers
were stationed on the grounds.

Lance Reventlow (right)

Polo revived after the war, and in 1948, Santa Barbara became home to the prestigious Pacific Coast Open tournament and its coveted five-foot-high silver and gold trophy. In the years that followed, a new set of personalities entered the scene: team sponsor Vic Graber, future Polo Hall of Famer Billy Linfoot, and the Walkers of Long Beach.   

“My whole family was involved in polo,” remembers Daniel Walker, now a club trustee. “Grandfather started
playing after World War II. Father came to Santa Barbara in 1958 specifically to play polo.” There’s a picture on the clubhouse wall, he adds, showing four generations of his family on the field decades later: his grandfather still playing at 90; his father, Kenneth; his brother, Henry, who subbed a few chukkers for their grandfather; himself; and son Matthew. 

At the time, Santa Barbara was the place to play in the winter. Robert Skene, an admired 10-goal player, took over as manager in 1960, and his athleticism, knowledge of horses, and strategic acumen inspired and attracted top teams. A year later, there was a new owner, too, when Aloha Airlines founder Ruddy Tongg acquired the club. He was determined to bring the country’s top tournament westward, notes his son Ronnie, who played as a student at UC Santa Barbara and later in 1962 won the U.S. Open with teammate Bob Skene. “The politics in those days were really something,” adds Ronnie Tongg. But somehow his father “was able to swing it and brought the Open to Santa Barbara, not only in 1963 but in 1966.”

Charging the field in the ’20s.

Yes, Santa Barbara polo was glamorous again, with movie stars like Jayne Mansfield and Zsa Zsa Gabor driving up the coast to hand out the trophies. Fess Parker played. So did actress Stefanie Powers. “One of the real characters was Barbara Hutton’s son, Lance Reventlow,” says Joel Baker, who remembers playing as a teenager. 

This being the 1960s, there were wild parties in the clubhouse, too, where the dancing would spill out onto the fields. As the decade ended, though, the music stopped, and the silence was deafening. Ruddy Tongg sold the club to the Azusa Citrus Company, which was eyeing the green fields for a supermarket site. It wasn’t the first time the club had been threatened. Carpinteria High School had almost moved to the grounds, but in 1969, with memberships dwindling, the situation looked dire. Bob Skene, who’d been away for a few years, was called back to manage the club. Though Azusa owned the polo fields, it couldn’t get permission from the county to develop them and couldn’t sell as long as the club kept up rent payments on its month-to-month lease—something Skene made certain. “Father said, ‘We have to save the club,’” recalls Skene’s son, Curtis. “He drove around and got checks for dues to pay the rent.” 

The Skene’s arriving in Los Angeles from a match in Argentina, 1949.

“Bob Skene kept the club alive,” says Baker. “He and his wife, Elizabeth, put their own money and time into it.”  The world-famous polo player attended county supervisors’ meetings to convince them of the club’s value to Santa Barbara. The supervisors had little interest in polo but even less in a supermarket development. Finally, in the early 1970s, club members devised a plan that won county approval: A polo-playing builder named Harry Hicks would put up condominiums on eight acres of the property, generating money for the club to buy the remaining 60 acres from Azusa. Cheers all around…until a real estate downturn sent Hicks into bankruptcy.

Heroically, Ambassador Glen Holden, Dr. Norman Ringer, and Kenneth Walker picked up the flag. Working with the bank that was foreclosing on the condos, in December 1975, the three established a trusteeship in perpetuity, as long as the field is used for polo activities. Holden, a polo player since the mid-1950s and former ambassador to Jamaica, was in charge of operations, essentially paying the bills until the club began to break even. Walker, a banker, supervised the development of tennis courts and 350-stall stables. “Dr. Ringer was president,” Daniel Walker says, adding that even his mother was involved in improving the grounds. “If it’s not a eucalyptus, my mother planted it.”

They set up the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club to manage the property, renovated the clubhouse, refurbished the Pacific Coast Open trophy, and laid the groundwork for the renaissance of the sport.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attend a July 9, 2011, event benefitting the American Friends of The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

“You can’t beat Southern California, the ocean and mountains, and the weather. People love to come here, and the fields are the best in the world,” insists Holden. “Professionals promote it to their patrons, and the best polo players in the United States play here.” 

“Polo is about the intersection of passion for horses, speed, danger, strategy, teamwork, and a life built around one of the most complicated sports in the world,” says Montecito resident Tom Barrack, who has brought his Piocho team to club tournaments for the last 20 years. He adds that the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club “is a sanctuary for horses, players, and fans.”

 “It’s a meeting place for the world’s most prestigious men to compete at a sport that they love,” agrees Daniel Walker. “At the end, they’ll shake hands and share a drink at the bar.”

“I have to give credit to God for giving us this place,” says Glen Holden. “But we’re keeping it up. It’s one of the best clubs in the world…a jewel of polo.”