Answer – Three reasons:1) Timing 2) Timing 3) Timing

We are running towards the ball at speed, when we get to the ball, our mind (clue is our mind) tells us-ok, now, swing, hurry, NOW !! We swing and guess what? Way too late. When we swing late, which most of us are pretty darn good at doing, we hurry our swing and catch the ball on our downward portion of our swing. All that does is drive the ball down into the ground or at best, our mallet rolls across the top of the ball and produces what we affectionately call the worm burner (for you worm lovers, that is slang for a grounder). That shot makes a louder noise and is tougher on the arm as you are hitting the ball against the ground as well as forward due to the late swing.

How do we convince our (note the word our) brain to swing earlier, say, like maybe Memo’s, Adam’s or Adolpho’s brains? The main difference between their brains and ours, aside from thousands of hours of practice, is that their brain is trained to tell them to start their swing earlier.

Here is a visual drill to help you out. Place four balls in a line about ten feet apart from each other. As you canter down the line, focus on hitting the last ball. Now the other three balls are markers so to speak as to when you should start your swing depending on your gait. The third ball is when you would start at a trot, the second ball at a gallop, and the first ball at a flat out run.

If you watch someone doing this from the side, it becomes very obvious, very quickly, that most of us start our swing at the fourth ball-the one you are hitting.

The markers spaced at 10 feet each may be a little off, but it will give you a better feel for training your mind to start your swing sooner. This is something that does not come factory installed. It is an art that has to be practiced and developed. Timing is an issue that will challenge most of us our entire playing career. So in other words, you are not alone. Maybe we should consider starting a recover group. Late Hitters Anonymous (LHA). Ok, maybe not. But, start your swing sooner than you think you should. If you keep doing it the way that you have always done it, you will keep getting the same results. Happy Polo !!

Most of you know that the game of polo is all about the horse. If you don’t, you will. The most important factor is being comfortable on your horse, at whatever level of play. If you and a horse are not a match, that is as simple as it gets. It does not matter how fast the horse is, how pretty they are, and whether or not anybody else likes it. The important part is that you feel secure and safe. Your requirements for certain characteristics of a horse’s playing performance are going to continually change due to your changing riding abilities and levels of play. If you are comfortable on a horse that can jump inside out, do 360’s faster than a spinning top, reach full speed an a couple of strides, great. If you have to be to work on Monday morning and have others to provide for, you might want a more solid, slightly less responsive model. One that doesn’t flip over on you just because you held onto them a little too tight, or at least that is what your trainer is telling you as you are looking at them with a glaze over your eyes, with a thousand pounds of horse now on top of you. Not only are you unclear as to who that trainer is, you are wondering why this stranger in an emt outfit is asking you what day it is and what your name is. I can not tell you how often I have avoided serious incidents in my forty years of playing, with a very simple dismount.

So how can one pull off a belly shot and why would one even want to.

The second part of the question is a good one as belly shots are a low percentage shot. It is like that between the legs tennis return that looks cool, but falls in the low percentage category.

A neck shot or tail shot would both be higher percentage. Even if you execute a belly shot correctly, there are lots of moving parts for that ball to pass through. However, there are times when a belly shot may just come in handy if you need it. Kind of like that sand wedge in your golf bag. You don’t use it that often, but it sure comes in handy when you need it. I myself tend to struggle in the sand traps. You think I would feel at home in a sand trap after all my years of arena polo. The only similarity that I saw in my arena polo and the sand trap, is that a tractor and drag would be more suitable for cleaning up the sand trap, then that dumb little rake they give you.

Anyway, back to the belly shot. The first rule, is do not swing under the horse. You swing down at the ball and hit the ground and the ball at the same time, chipping the ball, but stopping your follow thru. On my offside, my toe of my mallet is forward. On my nearside, the toe of my mallet is facing the rear. I have done belly shots on my nearside with the toe forward as well. I also had a lot more luck by angling the ball slightly from back to front as I passed the ball underneath the horse. The belly shot is a clever way to drag the ball to your free side away from the opponent in certain play situations. I will say that having the option for the belly shot helped me maintain possession many a time and even get some pretty cool goals over the years, but there is no question that the shot is low percentage, period.

What level is that? Some present that high goal is better supervision of incoming players; others feel that the more traditional “walk before you run” approach is better in lower goal. Which way is right? They both are, depending on your resources, riding skills, and mental attitude. However, it is true, that in lower levels of play, you are going to run into personalities playing well over their heads, pros coming up the ladder trying to show their stuff, and some pretty challenging horses. If you are financially able, and you have the ability to take direction, maintain your calm in chaos, and put in the time as to your riding skills, high goal is great. Obviously, your level of participation is going to be slightly different than all those other ten-goal players running around you, but you are learning from the best the game has to offer, and it is a real thrill ride. It does take a great deal of riding skill to ride at the high goal level, so make certain to get in your riding time. For an amateur playing amongst the professional ranks, field awareness and riding ability should be your cornerstones. It takes years sometimes decades to hone your hitting skills at those speeds, but riding skills and field awareness are the more important factors to focus on.

It took me a while (40 years) to remember what I really love about the sport of polo. Galloping on the back of a horse. That is what I loved my first ten years of playing when I seldom hit a ball and that is what I still love today. So maybe you make ten plays in a game, or almost all of them, it is galloping around on a horse, which in my opinion is a blast. Now, throw in an occasional shot sailing through the goal posts, while galloping down field, and now you get addiction, Your right, I didn’t say passion, passion is galloping on the back of a horse, I said addiction, that is the greatest game on this planet, polo. I think polo at any level, is wonderful. My personal suggestion as to levels is play both, if you are able. You learn more skills at the high goal level; you get the chance to execute them more in lower goal polo. The most important thing is to have good supervision at either level and to remember to watch out for yourself, to play in an environment that you are comfortable with.

You are running down the field, you alone are aware of what you are comfortable with and what you are not comfortable with, respective of speed, contact, and hitting. You need to take care of yourself, regardless of what you may be being instructed to do by a well meaning teammate. You should properly communicate any concerns or limitations that you might have to your teammates, so that you can come up with a more effective strategy for both you and your team. For example, you have been assigned an opponent that you are not physically able to stay with due to either horsepower or variance in riding skills. It is better to communicate that and try to adjust the strategy. It is true that you need to push yourself some to improve, but that should always be done carefully. Better to challenge yourself to more speed on the track and in higher goal practice matches, than throwing yourself into a competitive match, well over your head.

I have witnessed overly enthusiastic teammates encouraging a player to go to plays at speeds that they have no business attempting at their present level of competence. I have seen way too many players on horses that are not well suited to them over the years. It is true that we need to challenge ourselves to progress, but do it carefully. Polo is so much more fun when you are able to play the game for a long time.

Happy Polo !!

If you are able to stick and ball regularly, you need to start to imagine play situations to help you become more effective on the field of play. For example, practicing a tail shot to the middle from the end line, as opposed to an impossible neck shot. Or even a short back shot from the end line to a teammate behind you, so that the ball does not roll over the end line, setting the other team up for a knock-in. There are times when it would be better to let that ball roll over the back line, depending on the positioning of the two teams, but having the ability to execute a short back shot to a teammate is a good thing to practice. Many teams get the ball down field, but are unable to successfully navigate the ball to goal, as most shots are wide of goal. Often times the player may have been able to get off a higher percentage shot if they were able to think a little more about ball placement, speed, and shot selection as they were approaching goal. These are things you can practice or simulate while stick and balling, instead of running around for thirty minutes hitting offside forehanders as hard as you can. However, I will admit that running around just hitting offside forehanders can be pretty good therapy on certain days.

You will see some of the awesome magicians of our sport run into a melee, opposite of the direction of others and emerge from the pack with the ball and continue down to goal. It is always wonderful to watch, but not quite as easy to execute. I would advise for the most part, that players learn to turn with the direction of the flow of horses, so that you are in better position to defend the attacking players. When you see the pack beginning to turn, begin to slow your horse and prepare to turn, but first, yep, field awareness-never check or turn without checking in on the position of all of the players around you. Meeting players at speed can be very dangerous. In most cases, you try to meet a player in possession, you do not get the ball, and then you have left your back to the game and it is almost impossible to get back into position.

A client asked me to re-tread two of his horses after playing in the 12 goal leagues for the summer. He told me a bit about each horse over by his trailer right after the last game and we agreed that the horses should come to my place and that I would play them, though the likelihood of being able to was somewhat dubious.
After a new set of shoes the horses arrived and were assimilated by the herd and incorporated into the schooling program.

Their owner had not given these horses much accolade other then their original cost which I assumed should reflect their original quality. The owner could care less about that now and was most annoyed that these two horses, his most expensive, were now useless to him after just two years. One was a leaper, and the other a run away. His flowery descriptions of their behavior told the rest of the story.

I was told the hardware that was required to play these monsters was as monstrous as their tendencies. Sure enough when I first saddled up with a snaffle and a comfy saddle on the Run Away there was no stopping until we had climbed several hundred feet, but at the top of the nearest hill, an intense three minute canter up a steep slope, she seemed to stop on a loose rein but bore down on the bridle just as I wanted to let go and relax. She ran on through the point of stopping for no reason, so really we had just slowed down. I turned her in a sharp circle with a direct inside rein and eventually we stopped, but the mouth was very hard and her neck as stiff as a board.

Hills are great especially if the way home is directly down hill. On a leaping horse it is possible to very gently stop and then rein back. You can feel if the horse is responsive in the mouth, and if it is, then the leaping is probably more barn sour then anything else.

Barn sour is treatable with consistent schooling and the establishment of a work ethic in the horse, so leaping becomes an easy thing to fix if approached this way. However in this horse the problem was exacerbated by a very stiff neck just like the run away.

As an aside I used to ride some difficult horses on some very steep sandy hills as a way to stop them from leaping. I found that with their legs under them on a sandy hill they would concentrate on sliding down the hill. The trick is to find a hill that is long enough to stop on. Then rein back. Do this many times going home down hill.

Back to the stiff necks.

The owner had been using a lethal combination of “solutions” to the problems he was facing with his horses. In the run away’s mouth he placed some good hardware, as was logical, and in his hand he placed some leverage in the form of a draw rein or running rein.

In polo the running rein is used almost universally. It is used with great effect by many and has a place in the game, but although it’s virtues could be sung by many a player I am sure they would all agree that if it is used incorrectly it is a scourge for the horse.

I have seen the draw rein attached to every bit conceived but I have rarely heard of the draw rein being taken off the horse and the “bite” of the bit toned down. It would seem then that the training is not doing it’s job. The horse is not improving.

One of the pitt falls of the draw rein is that if it is held tight it just pulls the horse into a frame from whence the horse can’t perform at speed. At first the horse might submit to this assault on it’s mouth but as the level of play rises so do the expectations of the player and as such the horses demise should be noticed and dealt with.

In this case there was no one there for the horse and bad went to worse as training was undertaken on the field of play. As the size of the hardware mounted so did the fear in the horse.

It knew as it stood on the trailer that on that grass was pain. Eventually the fear inherent in the game coupled with the reactions from spurs, sounds, and so on caused this horse to over compensate. At first it would run every time it heard the ball get struck, and especially if the trailer were right ahead, in order to avoid the inevitable grip that meant spur. It would never select the lead that was away from the trailer, indeed it would never let the rider select the lead.

Now it was in the lead on the ladder of who is in charge.

And then it ran away, with a stiff neck and jaw that resisted all attempts from the rider to turn the horse using a draw rein who’s direct effect is to pull from the bit to wherever the rein is fastened on the saddle.
Without leg aids this is not an aid, just an impossible task.

When the horse is young and full of itself the breaker will inevitably have to present it with it’s first experience running in open country. This could be on a polo field or a trail with open country either side. It’s all the same to the youngster. If that horse were to bolt then the rider would use a direct inside rein to turn the horse in the airplane turn that is familiar to the green horse trainer. As the circles gets smaller the horse slows to an eventual stop. The direct inside rein is given so as not to raise the horses level of adrenalin just to place the head. I mention this because it is what the horse knows. Eventually one can teach the horse to come off the leg and that same rider can then use a draw rein as an aid in stopping provided he support and release the horse between maneuvers. Ridden like this the horse will flow and never become stiff.

On the other hand if the rider clamps on with his lower leg (and spur sometimes.) and draws in with a rein that helps him balance on the horses mouth then the flow stops and the horse takes charge in a battle that the rider will eventually have to loose using the tools he or she has chosen.

There has to be someone back in the pony lines that takes charge of your horses. If you can’t be there to re tread the horse between chukkers you will never find enough time on the field of play. Green horses and horses having problems become frustratingly “slow” in their maneuvers making the game seem faster and harder. “There is nothing worse then a slow run away!” as someone once said.