SPORTS

all us hopeless romantics, but in the fall, before the first dapper leaf departs its tree, there is just something about the smell of big money, controlled violence, sexy people, and good food all in one place. Some may find all of this at the school orientation social. We look to the polo fields.

Sixteen years ago. when the Willow Bend Polo & Hunt Club began playing serious competition polo, only owner Norman Brinker and probably a few Comanche Indians ventured that far north. Weed fields could be bought for $4,000 per acre, or about half the monthly rents paid out by today’s tenants,

Polo and the packaging of polo have carefully tracked the development of Far North Dallas except in one respect-at Willow Bend, the folks in charge have never been afraid to try and have fun. You wouldn’t expect a darling of Deep Ellum, the Reverend Horton Heat, to bang out his blues-driven funkrock after your basic sixth chukker on opening day, but there the “Rev.” will be on September 3 when the fall league begins.

At this polo club, each game begets a postgame that begets a party that can feature hay rides, Arabian horse exhibits, or carnival-style games. The grounds are magnificent, the parking is free, admission is $6, and the polo is consistently as good as anywhere in the United States. And although Bil Walton, the sport’s most exciting and most whispered-about bad boy, won’t be playing for Willow Bend in the fall league due to a prior commitment, fans will still be able to catch a glimpse of him on October 1 and 8 at The USPA 12-Goal Intercircuit Tournament. On and off the field, Walton hard-drives his particular steed with a controlled yet reckless abandon.

Opponents (and for that matter, dates) have called him “incredibly arrogant.” During the indoor season, Walton, considered the most dominating player of that smaller arena, simply failed to show up for the Dallas Dragoons’ championship contest. Some believed he was injured with a concussion; others were told that Walton was overseas playing (and, likely, not for free) with Prince Charles again. Whatever the reason, promoters struggled frantically to replace Walton with some immensely talented stranger. They did. They lost. The Dragoons would not repeat as champions, but what would be repeated were the gossipy whispers about Dallas polo’s bad boy. “Bil is really not bad or a boy, and I know he didn’t miss that game on purpose,” says Dragoons marketing director Woodrow Moore, “but he is very temperamental and some consider him a bit eccentric. However, he is clearly one of the most dominating players in the game. He plays his heart out on the field.”

Though indoor polo can certainly entertain, it’s the 300-yard-long fields like Willow Bend that allow the full panorama of man and horse, gouging and racing across soft turf after a ball about the size of a soft-ball and the consistency of a coconut. Many of the players have lost teeth to this “coconut” or even to their own mallets. Polo ponies, too, sometimes take a dim view of crashing into another half-ton of flesh, provoking the most proper of players to insist on a fresh pony every chuk-ker. Still, polo remains a gentleman’s game. And losers often down champagne toasts while standing arm-in-arm with their winners and the ubiquitous thin, gorgeous hostess in an after-six cocktail dress.

In a city too young for “old-money” traditions, Willow Bend could scramble, pompously, to fill that void. Happily, the club panders not to the public but to the spectacle. Usually about five boxes are not sold for the season, allowing those uninitiated to the sport to buy a box that seats six and then attend a tent party after the match. Any less-monied onlooker can find a bleacher seat with a clear view of a fast horse or a beautiful woman. And it’s that view, along with the aforementioned extras, that will hopefully bring Bil Walton back in the spring to wear the Willow Bend colors for the benefit of us hopeless romantics.