At Hurlingham

In the last decade, U. S. polo has experienced sweeping changes. Once practiced only by rich patricians, it has lately become popular among cowboys in the Southwest, cinemagnates in California. Once watched by socialites only, New York polo matches in the last few years have drawn crowds as large as baseball games. Determined to make polo in England more profitable, London's swank Hurlingham Club last month made the brave gesture of announcing that it would open its grounds to the public for the Westchester Cup series against the U. S. Before play started, an announcement in the London Times reassured readers who might have thought grey toppers were essential: "Dress: lounge suits." Unfortunately, the Hurlingham Polo Committee over looked the main feature of U. S. polo's sudden rise in popularity: 50-c- admission. Cheapest tickets to the first match in the two-out-of-three international series were priced last week at two guineas ($10.50). Good seats cost, as usual, five guineas.

Popularization is not the only department of the game in which British poloists would like to copy their U. S. rivals. They would also like to play as ably. When competition for the Westchester Cup began in 1886, ten years after polo was introduced in the U. S. by Publisher James Gordon Bennett, England won regularly. The famed "Big Four" of U. S. polo -- Devereux Milburn, Harry Payne Whitney and the Waterbury brothers, Monty and Larry -- turned the tide in 1909, won again in 1911 and 1913, without losing a game. The U. S. lost the Westchester Cup in 1914, regained it in the first series after the War in 1921. British teams challenging in 1924, 1927, 1930 failed to get a game. This year, discarding the precedent whereby the challenger plays on the defender's ground, the U. S. Polo Association, to keep the series going, had to offer to defend in England.

In learning to play like U. S. poloists, England's poloists have at least been practical. Two of their ablest Internationalists, Eric Tyrrell-Martin and Gerald Balding, have spent large portions of the last three years at Meadow Brook, Palm Beach and Del Monte. Poloist Balding learned his lesson so well that last year his handicap was raised to nine, only one less than famed Tommy Hitchcock, the world's only 10-goal player. Recalled to Hurlingham, Balding became with Tyrrell-Martin the nucleus of the British team. Last week, with Captain Humphrey Guinness behind Tyrrell-Martin at back and Hesketh Hughes ahead of Balding at No. 1, England rode out on international polo's soth anniversary to face the U. S. four of Eric Pedley, Michael Phipps, Stewart Iglehart, Winston Guest.

Hero of Hurlingham turned out to be Hesketh Hughes, a Welshman who learned his polo in the Argentine and looks like Golfer Gene Sarazen. A scrimmaging, scuffling, head-on player, with no finesse but prodigious determination, Hughes kept bunting shots past Winston Guest, who played at back as though he thought his opposing No. 1 were not worth bothering with. When, in the fourth chukker, chunky little Hughes poked the ball between the posts three times, England was only a goal behind. When Guinness scored again for England in the sixth, the score was tied at 7-all, and what had started as a rout was momentarily the tightest U. S. v. England polo since the War.

The swank crowd in the grandstand had time to give one exclamatory cheer before Pedley, on his way to equaling his own Cup record of nine goals scored in a single game, put through three goals to end the crisis. In the last chukker Balding and Hughes scored for England, but by that time there were only 90 seconds left to play and the Americans saved the game, 10-to-9.

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