The USPA has recently purchased the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Florida, part of a larger master plan with its origins in the “Polo 2020” task force including Virginia Polo alum Jeep Holden.
As part of a larger master plan, the purchase was made to secure a home base for the USPA and a permanent home for polo. Though the purchase is recent, the master plan was years in the making. Back in 2000, then Chairman Jack Shelton felt that much needed to be done to secure the future of polo in the United States and formed a task force, named “Polo 2020,” with the purpose of creating a master plan for restructuring the United States Polo Association and planning a direction for the future. An essential element to this plan was to let the contract for licensing the USPA logos expire and assume the responsibility for global licensing directly.
The keynote was to “Save the Money” to grow the sport and potentially buy a permanent home for polo years down the road. The challenge was at the time the USPA did not have the money, and they really didn’t know if they could do it. As treasurer to the USPA, Jeep Holden (Virginia Polo alum, UVA ‘76) knew this well. But they thought they’d be able to earn the money through royalties and dividends from the USPA global licensing and “save” roughly 80% in a reserve. This proved to be true. The USPA now probably earns more in a week in licensing programs than they had in the bank in 2000.
The task force was made up of more than a dozen USPA board members, including Jeep Holden, David Cummings, Peter Rizzo, Pete Alworth, and Gene Burke. Together the five mentioned made a master plan for the restructuring of the USPA; the organization we see today is the product of these meetings. Here are a few of the many improvements designed by this task force: the Polo Development Initiative, the umpire program, the purchase of a home for polo, and board limits/terms (to get new ideas into the organization). Additionally, at the time polo players felt they had no say in their board, so the committee addressed the question of how to make them feel they did and decided the answer was to give them a vote.
The Polo Development Initiative (PDI) outlined how the USPA would spend some money on clubs where it was really needed to make a big difference for the clubs. Peter Rizzo put these parameters in place. The Virginia Polo Club has benefited from this grant process with projects including a portion of the funding for the announcer’s stand and the newly constructed hay & equipment shed in 2022.
In 2013 (after 11 years), the final two Polo 2020 initiatives were passed by the Board at its fall meeting, and this finalized the complete plan for the USPA reorganization. In the preceding years parts and pieces had been passed by the board, with the major governing revamping passing in 2002. Today, in 2022 the dream of the USPA owning a permanent home for polo has become a reality.
As an additional note, when David Cummings, one-time executive director of the USPA, came to the Virginia Polo 50th anniversary celebration in 2003 Jeep remembers sitting around the bonfire by the outdoor arena with him. Earlier in the day Jeep had shown him the whole facility and talked about its origins and alumni supporters. When Jeep said, “I think this is one of the best intercollegiate facilities in the country,” David’s reply was, “This is one of the ten best polo facilities in the US.”
