Poloists Rated

Even the greatest polo players are not celebrities, such is the well-bred and sporting background of the game. The name of Thomas Hitchcock Jr. is, it is true, known to a great many persons who are not his friends. But these people do not nuzzle and push to catch a glimpse of him when he appears in public as they do to see Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, William Tatem Tilden II or Robert Tyre Jones Jr. Unique among all U. S. games, polo has remained the property of players rather than spectators. Significant, for example, is the fact that Polo, the one national magazine (monthly) devoted ably and exclusively to the game, has a circulation of only 2,816./-

There is however a class of persons to whom polo is more important than life or death. To these, great polo players seem not celebrities but gods whose divinity no intimacy can impair. Grooms and rubbers and kids whose fathers work in the stables, they find some precious excitement in the smell of turf and horses, the feeling of rubbed leather. These were the ones who were most excited and least surprised last week when the Handicap Committee of the U. S. Polo Association announced the handicap changes for 1929.

Polo handicaps indicate the individual abilities of players. Each player receives a handicap of so many "goals." In a handicap match, the general practice is to add together the individual handicaps of the players and give the difference in the two totals to the weaker team. The highest individual rating is ten goals.

There were several notable shifts in last week's new U. S. ratings, made as a result of the international series last October in which a much-mulled-over U. S. team played three matches against the Argentines and won two of them. Devereaux Milburn, now retired from international polo, was lowered at his own request from ten goals to six, partly because he broke his collarbone last year. Malcolm Stevenson was dropped from ten goals to eight. Thomas Hitchcock Jr. alone among U. S. players remained handicapped at ten goals. His only peer now is Lewis Lacey of the Argentine.

Other ratings:

Nine goals--Frederick Winston Churchill Guest, Meadow Brook, Westbury, L. I.

Eight goals--Malcolm Stevenson, Meadow Brook; J. Watson Webb, Meadow Brook; Harry East, Riverside, Calif.; J. Cheever Cowdin, Rockaway Hunt; Eric Pedley, Midwick Country Club, Pasadena, Calif.; A. P. Perkins, Midwick; Earle A. S. Hopping, unattached ; W. Averell Harriman, Sands Point Polo Club, Port Washington, L. I.

Seven goals--Earle W. Hopping, Bryn Mawr. Pa.; Robert E. Strawbridge Jr., Bryn Mawr; E. J. Roeseke Jr., Santa Barbara, Calif.; Capt. Peter P. Rodes, Army Polo Association; Stephen Sanford, Westchester Polo Club, Newport, R. I.; Capt. C. H. Gerhardt, Army; Capt. C. A. Wilkinson, Army Polo Association.

Last autumn, Hitchcock Jr. was the only player sure of his place on the U. S. international team. After a summer of practice matches, a team was finally an nounced, beaten by a scrub team, changed, reannounced, changed, listed in pro grams, changed, beaten by the Argentines, changed once more.

As a result of last week's rating Hitch cock Jr. became more than ever the deity of Long Island's polo prairies and of the warm fields near Aiken, S. C. Now 28, he has enjoyed more than a decade of polo's peculiar fame. It was before the War, when he was still in his 'teens, that the efficacy of his mother's coaching first be came apparent. She, a vigorous woman who still occasionally plays at Westbury herself, is credited with having inspired and largely trained a generation of U. S. players.

Hitchcock Jr.'s name first appeared in U. S. headlines after his sensational escape from a German prison camp when he had been supposed dead. Now, lately married (TIME, December 24), he is a modestly obscure person except when, on greener fields than those of war, he rides hard, swings mightily and shouts even more frequently than do most polo players the emphatic and yet unshocking blasphemies which are part of the lingo of the game.

/-But the rate of Polo's annually renewed subscriptions is conservatively figured at 90%.