Polo, Anyone?

It Was a Day for High Society, High Spirits and High Fashion. Oh, and Horses.

It was a lovely day for polo. Really. Just lovely.

This was Saturday at the Great Meadow Polo Club near The Plains, out in the Virginia Piedmont. There was the Ambassadors' Cup, which drew a lot of international diplomats and some buff professional players. They played for the Chief of Protocol Trophy, a friendly competition the U.S. chief of protocol has hosted for the past five years.

There was the Courage Cup, a charity event, and a handful of other matches. Organizers billed it as one of the biggest polo events in the region since the sport's Jazz Age glory days, when polo was an Olympic sport.

These days, although polo is again gaining popularity, matches are as much a society as an equestrian sporting event.

So Saturday afternoon, there were a few hundred well-heeled observers ducking into white tents to get out of the heat, gazing out at a manicured grass field. We can't say how many people overall as we were not allowed in the Ambassadors' tent. Because, we were told, a society magazine was sponsoring the tent and other reporter lowlifes weren't allowed in.

We were so upset at this.

But then we were out on the field with everybody else during the divot stomp. This is a break in the match where people drink champagne and say things like, "Hey, the brown thing isn't a divot !" And we met Dustee Tucker, who is from Dallas and is in public relations. We asked her how she would describe the event, and she said:

"It is truly the beautiful people of the day. The champagne is free-flowing and smiles are abundant."

Did we mention Tucker is in PR?

Then the man on the public-address system said something that sounded like this:

"BLEREIOUSN NEED THE BLWERS CHAMPAGNE IOSEKBL THANK YOU!"

This was generally understood to mean the patrons had to get off the field. Apparently the buff pros wanted to get back to playing. Our usually reliable notebook says the team sponsored by Moet was leading the team sponsored by Outback, 4-3, at this point.