Polo in the United States.

A note on sources: the United States Polo Association's own history pages could not be opened during our research, so the facts below come from the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame, the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA), local histories and Wikipedia, each named where it is used.

James Gordon Bennett Jr. and 1876

The HPA says polo was introduced to the United States in 1876 by James Gordon Bennett Jr., who had seen the game at Hurlingham on a visit to England. The Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame says Bennett watched polo in England and France, came home with equipment and a knowledge of the Hurlingham rules, had ponies sent from Texas and set up headquarters at Dickel's Riding Academy in New York.

The museum says the Westchester Polo Club was formed on 6 March 1876 and that the first game was played that May on the grass infield of the Jerome Park race track, beside land Bennett had bought north of the city. Wikipedia dates that first outdoor match to 13 May 1876, after indoor play at Dickel's. Bennett's own playing career was short, the museum says, but he kept backing the sport. He died in 1918, and the Polo Association recognised him as the man who introduced polo to the United States.

The club's founding date varies by source:

• The Museum of Polo and a Newport history site give 6 March 1876.
• Wikipedia's Polo article gives 6 May 1876, and notes that sources conflict on which came first.
• A Maryland State Archives page gives 1877.

A rival claim from Texas

A Grayson County, Texas local-history page argues that Denison, Texas, had a polo team and ground by 1874, before Bennett's games in New York. Wikipedia cites the Galveston News of 2 May 1876 for a challenge from Denison to Bennett. This is a local tradition we could not confirm, but it is part of the record of who claims to have played first.

Newport and Meadow Brook

What's Up Newp, a Newport news site, reports that the first polo game in Newport, Rhode Island, was played on 10 July 1876 with Bennett and Lord Mandeville taking part. It says the Newport ground hosted the first match between two separate clubs in 1877 and the first international match in the country in 1886, the first Westchester Cup.

Wikipedia's articles disagree on when Meadow Brook began: its USPA article says Meadow Brook became a polo club in 1879, while its Meadowbrook Polo Club article says the club was established in 1881 and opened its own field in 1884. The same article says Meadow Brook hosted the US Open from 1923 to 1953, and that its fields were razed for the Meadowbrook Parkway in 1954.

The Polo Association, 1890

According to Wikipedia, the Polo Association, later the United States Polo Association, was founded on 21 March 1890 with seven member clubs. Its purpose was to coordinate games, standardise the rules and set handicaps. Its first chairman, H. L. Herbert, led it from 1890 to 1921.

Herbert also gave the country its handicaps. The Museum of Polo says he devised the American handicap system in 1888, making him the country's first and only handicapper, and drafted the first American field and general rules, adapted from Hurlingham's. The HPA also gives 1888 for the American handicap. Wikipedia's polo handicap article instead ties the system's start to the founding of the association in 1890. The handicaps page explains how the system works today.

Wikipedia records the first US Open in 1904, won by the Wanderers. It also reports that in the 1930s the association had 88 clubs and 2,889 playing members, 1,276 of them military, falling to 56 clubs and 614 members in 1950. We have not been able to check those figures against USPA records.

Style and format

Wikipedia credits Harry Payne Whitney with leading a shift to a faster, long-hitting style of play in the early 20th century. Whitney played on the United States team, with Lawrence Waterbury, J. M. Waterbury Jr. and Devereux Milburn, that won the Westchester Cup at Hurlingham in 1909, the side Wikipedia calls the "Big Four". In the late 1950s, again according to Wikipedia, Walter Scanlon introduced a shorter, four-period form of the match.

International rivalries

Two international series run through American polo's history. The Westchester Cup against Great Britain began at Newport in 1886, and the United States won every contest the HPA lists from 1921 to 1939. The Cup of the Americas against Argentina began in 1928. Wikipedia says the United States won the first two series and Argentina every one from 1936 onward. Both are covered in the international era.

American teams also travelled south. Wikipedia's Argentine Open records list the Meadow Brook team of 1932 as the only winner of that championship from outside Argentina, beating Santa Paula 8-7. Tommy Hitchcock Jr., whom Olympedia records at 10 goals for 18 years between 1922 and 1940, has his own entry on the notable players page.

The association moves

Wikipedia traces the association's headquarters from New York to Oak Brook, Illinois (1967), Lexington, Kentucky (1986) and Lake Worth, Florida (2015). In June 2022 it bought a club in Wellington, Florida and renamed it the USPA National Polo Center. The HPA records England's 2023 Westchester Cup win there.

More recently, the Federation of International Polo reports that the United States beat Argentina 16-14 in Virginia in 2025 to win the second FIP Arena World Polo Championship, its first title in that event.