Professional Polo is a curious sport: each team is made up of four players and generally one player is the patron of the team. The patron pays for everything: all the horses, all the transport, along with any other costs and he pays the wages of the other three teammates. It is fair to say the patron is not normally a good player – even in some cases being just a small step up from a spectator. What this means is Polo, at its highest level, is rarely played by two teams each with four professional players and this is what makes the Argentine Open so special.
Not only are all the players professional but no team has a collective handicap of lower then 28 (each player is allotted a handicap between 1 – 10, 10 being the best) in fact the two teams in the final almost always have a collective handicap of 35 or more.
The Argentine Open is Polo at its absolute best and even if you not interested in the game it is an incredible spectacle of extraordinary skill.
It is made that bit more special by El Catedral, Buenos Aires’ beautiful Polo stadium, which lies in the heart of the city.
