The relationship between professional polo players and their patrons is a subject of curiosity—on and off the field. Off the field—aside from the team talks and polo planning—it is usually a friendship or association cemented by social occasions.

The M and M stand for partners Matias Magrini and Russ McCall.

Yet for 9-goal Argentine professional Matias Magrini and Atlanta self-made businessman Russ McCall—founders and co-owners of the New Bridge Polo and Country Club—it has extended beyond the après-polo restaurant meeting and the team practices to the realm of business partners.

“I’ve never worked for anyone else,” said McCall. “I’ve always worked for myself and been in business for myself. I didn’t start with anything, so I have to trust my instincts. If, after 30 years of trusting your instincts, it goes fairly well, you gain confidence. And now if something looks like a good idea, why not do it? You’re not getting any younger. Pretty soon you’re going to be like the dust on the ground so you’d better go ahead with your life or the world’s going to pass you by.”

Out of such sentiments the New Bridge Polo and Country Club in Aiken, South Carolina, was born four years ago. An 861-acre real estate development in the booming polo countryside east of Aiken with five fields, a residential gated equestrian community and clubhouse underway, it is now steeling itself to host the 2005 USPA Gold Cup in September in conjunction with neighboring Langdon Road Polo Club and the considerable support of the expanding Aiken polo community.

Even the horses live in comfort at New Bridge with high ceilings and lots of light.

The concept of the club was Magrini’s idea, or at least something that was at the back of his mind as he scoured the Aiken area for property to buy and use as inexpensive turnout for his horses. “In Argentina it’s called ‘chukkerage,’” he explained. “It’s what they call acreage here. In order to pay for the land for the polo clubs in Argentina, they sold lots. This is like Argentina, but more than that. You can have your horses stabled here but also with a little bit of turnout for them.”

Magrini came across an inspiring piece of property, but it was too big for his own personal use. Coincidentally a mutual friend at that time introduced him to McCall, an enthusiastic polo beginner. They were soon acquainted as polo professional and patron until in a casual conversation on the way to the Columbia airport the idea of buying land was discussed and the business partnership was underway.

“We didn’t really have a big plan,” said McCall. “We got our feet wet starting slow. We never put an ad in a magazine. We put in two fields and started with that. It [the club] happened more like a seed that is growing. Every year it has changed and every year it is like a plant that is getting more interesting.”

The changing face of New Bridge Polo and Country Club reflects the recent transformation of Aiken itself. A town whose equestrian past was founded on the perennial influx of wealthy winter colonists from the Northeast and their pastimes of racing, carriage driving, steeplechasing, hunting and polo at the historic Aiken Polo Club is experiencing an equestrian revival beyond the imagination of most established residents and newcomers, such as Magrini. “My first impression of the place was very good,” he said. “But I never thought honestly that Aiken was going to have that huge potential for polo that it’s having now.”

The annual fall polo horse sale adds to the excitement and helps draw players to Aiken.

Owen Rinehart and his wife, Georgina, moved to Aiken some 10 years ago, sharing a vision of a professional polo players’ haven with their neighbor and co-founder of the subsequent Langdon Road Polo Club, Adam Snow. Owen is the first to confess his surprise at the intense polo development of the past few years. Both these leading American professionals play vital roles in the growing polo community and are working with McCall and Magrini to bring the USPA Gold Cup to the town.

“I think the reason Aiken is so wonderful is because of the people who come to live here,” said Rinehart during his speech at a fall party at New Bridge held to launch the 2005 USPA Gold Cup. “This makes it the greatest place in the fall and the spring in the country. I am pleased to be here and would like to thank Russ and Matias for the enthusiasm and energy that they bring. … Everybody who has moved here is doing the same for the improvement of polo.”

In addition to the 30-plus professional players that have come to town, the sport’s revival has also spawned some substantial polo farms, often featuring their own private polo fields—the polo operations of patrons such as Christine Cato, Henry Cato, Peter Michaels, Barb and Tom Uskup and Rick Hartnett.

Some of the facilities have been made available for the USPA Gold Cup. “It is a community effort,” explained McCall. “And it has to be.”

Owen Rinehart, Russ McCall and Matias Magrini announce the USPA Gold Cup.

One of the existing barns at New Bridge Polo and Country Club.

That is why the USPA Gold Cup is being promoted as “hosted by New Bridge Polo and Country Club in conjunction with Langdon Road Polo Club and the whole Aiken polo community.” Within those resources there is also a growing pool of professional players who have taken up residence in the town.

“The timing [for the Gold Cup] is about right,” said McCall. “Because look at all the people we have living here. Tiger Kneece, John Gobin, Owen Rinehart, Julio Arellano, Adam Snow and Luis Escobar. There’s probably as many I haven’t mentioned as I have. Where else in the country do you find that many players, apart from Wellington in the winter months? I don’t think there’s a place … so why shouldn’t the USPA Gold Cup be held in Aiken?

“The fields are going to be perfect. The patrons have a huge number of players to pick from that live here that are going to be half the price they would be in Wellington. The patrons are going to have a good time, and it’s going to be relatively inexpensive. The barns are cheap to rent, the horses are on their way down to Florida at that time of year so they can stop here and turn out for a month or two after the tournament. So it’s kind of on the way. The teams are going to have the time of their life, and they’re all going to come back—watch.”

Some of the professional players who have moved to Aiken in the last few years have bought property within New Bridge Polo and Country Club, living the dream that Magrini had pictured in his mind when he first set eyes on the place. Francisco Bilbao and his wife, Marina, sold property outside the club and bought within. They built a barn and this year rented one of the new fieldside “cottages” that sit on the far side of the No. 1 field to accommodate players or be sold to interested parties. “Every day in the morning and again in the evening you would see Frankie walk over to the barn with his son [3-year-old Matteo]. You can’t buy that,” Magrini said.

At the moment the three elegant two-bedroom cottages, which housed the Bilbao family this fall, sit by themselves on the edge of the No. 1 field. They are testament to a blueprint for the club and will be joined by many, many more such residential sites to be sold by local Realtors. For Magrini’s vision includes not only five, 10 or higher acreage lots with barns and pasture but also private houses lining the fields, much as they line the fairways on numerous golf course developments across the United States. So far they have acquired property owners in the shape of an accountant, a chef and a massage therapist, all with a common bond through their love of horses. As the polo club also appeals to a wider circle of equestrian enthusiasts, this pattern is expected to repeat.

Soon, the polo fields will be lined with more cottages, barns, pasture and private houses.

Aiken has enough reasonably-priced land for both polo fields and turnout for the horses.

“The community is not used to it,” said Magrini. “They are used to living on golf courses. But there is nothing better than living on a polo field. You have those 15 acres where nothing can happen to your children. It’s a protected community and a safe environment for families. It is also a place where people can watch the sets go out and the chukkers being played and enjoy a polo lifestyle even if they don’t play polo themselves.”

McCall can understand the attraction, having aspired to be part of the sport long before he ever picked up a polo mallet.

“I grew up with polo pictures around the summerhouse on Long Island where the horse side of my family lives,” he said. “They lost all their money in the Depression, but before the Depression in the ’20s everybody played—my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my great uncle who died in the First World War and my uncle who went to Cornell—he played on Army issue horses or something. But then nobody had any money … and it takes money to play.”

Life quickly turned around for McCall through inauspicious circumstances beginning with the opening of his own cheese store in Atlanta 1967.

“I was in graduate school getting an MBA and was bored,” he said. “After the first year I found another fellow that wanted to start a business and we started it together. My grandmother loaned me $5,000. And after a while I had five shops. We had a major recession, and I was almost bankrupt. I started selling assets to get the inventory down and pay the debts I had. That became a distribution wholesale business, that little commissary became a big business.”

With McCall’s business success he was able to pursue his childhood dream when, eight years ago, his wife, Carolyn, gave him a gift of horseback riding lessons with a man named Jack Cashin who played polo. McCall was in his 50s at the time and admits that for the first year he was no horseman. But he made up for it with enthusiasm and asked the players on the field if he could ride alongside them while they played chukkers.

“I had the time my of life just trotting up and down the field as the ball went back and forth,” he said. “I was watching the play and all that … and I thought, ‘I’m going to do this.’”

The three existing cottages, for sale or rent, have that “there’s no place like home” feel.

With Magrini’s help he has done it and played competitively and with consistent victories at the medium-goal level. Next year McCall plans to move up to the 26-goal level by participating in the USPA Gold Cup. The energy that fueled his passion for polo will now be turned to the successful running of the USPA Gold Cup.

To this extent Jimmy Newman has been hired as tournament director, the USPA Gold Cup 2005 has been launched with a festive start at the fall party, the buzz has started and several key patrons have expressed interest in entering a team.

“The season is over. The weather was great, the fields were perfect and now everybody is talking about the Gold Cup,” says Magrini. “Everything has happened so good because of Russ’ energy. He is fighting every penny to make polo better. It is with the moral support of Russ that we, myself, Adam and Owen, are going to go ahead and make the USPA Gold Cup successful. People want security and they trust Russ. It’s a pleasure to work with him. Everything is positive, and when Russ comes he gives encouragement to everybody on the farm. The same energy he has brought to New Bridge he will bring to the USPA Gold Cup so that we can say: ‘I don’t want you to come ... I want you to come back.’ Because it’s not a year deal, it’s a forever deal.”