Polo Pickings

East-West polo in the U. S. started in the summer of 1933 as a feature of the Century of Progress. West won, in a series of three games which observers considered the most exciting in 20 years. East then challenged West to a return match. Last week, after a summer in which horse vans carrying ponies from one practice field to another have done more than their share of traffic-blocking on the narrow roads of Long Island's North Shore, both sides picked their teams:

West East

Eric Pedley No. 1 Michael Phipps

Elmer Boeseke No. 2 James Mills

Cecil Smith No. 3 Winston Guest

Aidan Roark Back William Post

West, favored to win at odds of 2-to-1, has on its team two of the three 10-goal players in the U. S. Cecil Smith played his first game ten years ago. Before that he had schooled horses on a Texas ranch, | where his employer taught him the game, gave him mounts when he improved sufficiently to go to Meadow Brook. The 10-goal handicap he got last winter was the reward for his performance in the first East-West series. Elmer Boeseke, the other 10-goaler, is the biggest high grade U. S. poloist: 6 ft. 4 in. He played on the 1924 Olympic team which lost to the Argentines in Paris. Eric Pedley, whose j handicap was reduced from 9 to 8 two years ago, is still considered the best No. 1 in the world. He is the same age as Boeseke (38), belongs to the same club (Southern California's fashionable Midwick). Aidan Roark, rated at 8 goals, is the younger brother of Capt. 'Tat" Roark, famed British Internationalist. Born in Ireland's County Carlow, he is now a U. S. citizen, a cinema executive (Twentieth Century) in Hollywood. Forced off the team at the last moment by an attack of rheumatism was H. W. ("Rube") Williams who distinguished himself by his fine playing in the East-West games last year until he fractured his leg in the second game.

East's main problem, after Thomas Hitchcock (who has had his 10-goal handicap for 13 years) was injured in the second trial match last month, was to pick from an overabundance of able young players the four who function best together. Younger, lighter, with an aggregate handicap of 30 goals to the West's 36, East last week had only one seasoned Internationalist: Winston Guest, who had returned from a honeymoon withhis Woolworth heiress bride, Helena McCann Guest, just in time for the trial matches. Of his three teammates only one played in the East-West series last year. Mike Phipps is a stubby, hard-riding youngster who was a member of Yale's intercollegiate championship team in 1930 and 1932. Like Mills, who also played on the Yale team, he learned polo from the late Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock. Billy Post, whose father is one of the shrewdest judges of ponies in the country, played at Princeton, is handicapped at 7 goals.

Ponies. Last year's series was important to polo because it made clear once and for all that the game can no longer be considered a pastime reserved for aristocrats at Meadow Brook or Midwick. This year's may have an equally important effect upon fashions in breeding polo ponies. The East's string is composed mostly of ponies imported from Argentina. The West are determined to use only U. S.-bred mounts if possible, a limitation which threatened to work a hardship on its team. Because the polo season in California does not begin until December, it was comparatively easy for the West's manager, Carleton Burke, to round up 49 of the best ponies in his section. They went east in an air-conditioned train last month.

Games. A two-out-of-three series at Meadow Brook, where the grandstands are robin's-egg blue and where planes from nearby airports make most of the players' angry epithets inaudible, was scheduled to start last week, postponed by rain.

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