One of the most important statistics for a horse polo team is a player’s handicap, which not only rates a player’s skill, sportsmanship, horsemanship and strategic knowledge but can affect the starting score of a handicapped game.
There are three systems, an English system managed by the Hurlington Polo Association, a North American system managed by the USPA, and a system used in Argentina, which differs slightly from the other two by not having any minus handicaps.
In all three handicap scales, the top score is a ten-goal handicap, a standing held by only three active male players in the world today, with two players with a female handicap of ten goals as well.
Whilst there is an English player with an arena handicap of ten goals, the last outdoor ten-goal player born in England was born nearly 120 years ago.
Gerald Barnard Balding Sr was born in 1903 in a family of polo players, with his two brothers Ivor and Barney reaching seven-goal handicaps, and would spend his prime years as a player playing at the Meadow Brook Club in Long Island, at that time the centrepiece of American polo.
During a time that has since become known as the Golden Age of Polo, when up to 30,000 spectators would watch international games against the all-conquering Argentinean national team.
He would during his career win the Junior Championship, the Hurlingham Champion Cup and the US Open twice, with a polo handicap of 10 goals making him the last English player ever to do so, with a particular speciality for striking the ball.
When asked about the future of polo during the 1930s, he expressed frustration that the game was not taken as seriously at the time as it was in the USA and Argentina, and that frustration fuelled his ascent to the top of the Polo world.
He died aged 54 in 1957, with his children becoming renowned racehorse trainers, and his granddaughter becoming the famous BBC sports broadcaster Clare Balding.