Outdoor Polo Match
Middleburg VA
2011

https://destinationpolo.com/about-polo

Polo is considered to be one of the oldest team sports and was first played around 200 B.C. in Persia. This military game is a product of 1,000 years of breeding and training of the horse and has evolved into an organized world-wide sport. Today, the sport of polo is played in two formats: Arena and Outdoor. Although the concepts are similar, the playing surfaces and the rules are slightly different.

The Outdoor game is played on a much larger surface with dimension of 160 yards wide (boarded) and 300 yards long, which makes it ten times the size of an official arena or ten football fields. Arena boards encompass the arena and are normally six feet high, whereas Outdoor, the boards are only eleven inches in height. Both applications assist in keeping the ball in play. There are other differences such as there are four players Outdoor and three players in the Arena. The Outdoor ball is made of plastic or wood and is 3" to 3 ½" in diameter. The arena ball should not be less than 4" to 6" in diameter. In the Outdoor Game, after each score, the scoring team changes goals and in the Arena Game, the team changes after each chukker. One of the major differences of the Outdoor Game is that the element of danger increases because of the increase in speed and the requirement to be more proficient as a horseman. More horses are required in that a normal Outdoor Game consists of six chukkers vs four chukkers in the Arena. Destination Polo Doug Barnes