PAT ON THE BACK

April 08, 1957

CECIL CALVERT SMITHTwenty-four years ago this onetime cowboy took a fellow Texan and a couple of Californians to the first East-West polo match and beat Tommy Hitchcock, the Guest brothers and Mike Phipps. "Polo," Will Rogers gloated, "has gone right out of the drawing room and into the bunk-house." More importantly, polo took Smith, today in his 20th year as 10-goal player, out of a Llano County bunk-house and onto playing fields all over the country, to the rejuvenating benefit of a game whose future never looked brighter. One case in point is polo's new look: the score or so-of low-handicap clubs that flourish around communal stables throughout the U.S. Another: Florida's classic high-goal matches, sparked over the past seasons by Smith, who, as an admirer once said, put the home run into polo.