![\"\"](\"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/polo.jpg\")
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April 25, 2000 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Jack Cashin has the face of a man who has fought life and won.<\/p>\n
It is weathered and lined and topped with a tussock of white hair that looks fine uncombed. He is 75 and handsome. He could be in the movies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he even was a couple times.<\/p>\n
Cashin’s maxim is “Life should be lived like a cavalry charge.” And for three quarters of a century he has been at the head of the pack, yelling “Tallyho!”<\/p>\n
Cashin has built fortunes and lost them and built them again. He has been a vacuum cleaner salesman, a magazine publisher and a race-car driver. He has been a model, a lieutenant in World War II and a successful restaurateur.<\/p>\n
He has owned an island in the Bahamas. He ran for governor of Georgia in 1998. Now, he owns and operates Chukkar Farm in Cherokee County, home of the Scuppernong Polo Club.<\/p>\n
“You’ve packed a lot into your 75 years,” I said to Cashin as we sipped lemonade in the kitchen of his Alpharetta, Ga. farmhouse before my introduction to polo.<\/p>\n
“Well,” he responded with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes, “75 years is a long time.”<\/p>\n
For all the restlessness that has charged Cashin’s existential existence, he now seems like a man at peace, a man who has found his purpose. He is a man who has found polo.<\/p>\n
Of the many hats Cashin has worn over the years, the polo helmet has stayed on the longest.<\/p>\n
It all started when he was 48. He had just moved his wife and six children from Cleveland, Ohio to the Atlanta area. He read a newspaper article about the Atlanta Polo Club and he decided he wanted to give the sport a try \u00e2\u20ac\u201d so, in typical Cashin fashion, he did.<\/p>\n
He bought a horse, no matter that he had never ridden one before.<\/p>\n
“I learned to ride and play polo at the same time,” Cashin said. “Which is dumb.”<\/p>\n
But eventually it worked, and he’s been playing ever since. Now, on his 170-acre expanse approximately 45 minutes from Gainesville, Ga. he teaches others the game of polo. Not the dumb way, the fun way.<\/p>\n
“I like to describe polo as soccer, hockey and basketball on a horse traveling at 35 miles per hour while trying to hit a baseball with a stretched out croquet mallet. That’s kind of what it is,” he said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n
I began my lesson on a horse that I could handle. It was made of wood and locked in a cage in one of Cashin’s stables. This is where I learned the polo swings from Gregory Mayer, a 19-year-old Frenchman who has been playing polo for most of his life.<\/p>\n
It’s easy to lose your balance during the polo swing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even while on the back of a fixed fake horse. You’re standing up in stirrups and swinging your right arm like a windmill. But for all the early awkwardness, the swing can at once feel almost natural. The game itself is thousands of years old. Can it be that humans were meant to play polo?<\/p>\n
Long known as the sport of kings and princes, Cashin’s goal is to make polo accessible to the masses. Lessons on well-trained polo ponies are affordable at Chukkar Farm. And if you’d like to continue playing, you can lease one of the farm’s horses. If you own a horse, you can board it there, too.<\/p>\n
“If you’re of modest means, I’m the way to do it,” Cashin said. “Most clubs are not as casual as we are. Most clubs don’t have as much fun as we do.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/polo2.jpg\")
Most clubs don’t have the same demographics as Scuppernong, either. In a sport historically dominated by males, females are the majority at Cashin’s club. Although not to the same extent, more and more females are getting involved in polo nationwide, as well. Not long ago, such things were considered taboo.<\/p>\n
“If we wanted to play back then, we had to put our hair up in our helmet and sign up as a guy,” said Cashin’s daughter-in-law Elisa Cashin, who lives on the farm with her husband, Cashin’s son Jason.<\/p>\n
I spent the next part of my lesson observing. Sunday scrimmages are a weekly occurrence at Chukkar Farm.<\/p>\n
Polo is a beautiful sport to watch. Man and beast work as one. The connection is impressive.<\/p>\n
As afternoon turned to evening, the thoughts of players and spectators alike turned to the wine and cheese that awaited them back at the stables. Wine and cheese is one polo tradition that Cashin doesn’t mind carrying on at his club.<\/p>\n
“We’re probably the only club around that parties more than we play,” he said with a wink.<\/p>\n
So as play winded down, as the last chukker \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a period of play in polo \u00e2\u20ac\u201d approached, I hopped on the back of Akbar, an Appaloosa and one of Cashin’s favorite polo ponies.<\/p>\n
Club-member Nancy Bailey coached me at first, but then Akbar and I went off on our own. I tapped the ball forward and we followed along behind it. I tapped it forward again.<\/p>\n
We never went too fast, and our progress was often interrupted by my mishits. But we’d slowly circle back around and I’d swing at the ball again.<\/p>\n
Akbar is known for his patience.<\/p>\n
We \u00e2\u20ac\u201d horse, ball and human \u00e2\u20ac\u201d eventually made it to the goal at the far end of the field. And I knocked the ball through the posts.<\/p>\n
Now, I know it meant nothing, and I’m pretty sure it went unnoticed by the rest of the group, but for that moment I felt like a king … or a prince, at least.<\/p>\n
Bring on the wine and cheese!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
April 25, 2000 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Jack Cashin has the face of a man who has fought life and won. It is weathered and lined and topped with a tussock of white hair that looks fine uncombed. He is 75 and handsome. He could be in the movies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he even was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}