Updated 05/25/05

The Hurlingham Polo Association’s edgy new magazine, Hurlingham, is a relaunch of the association’s former Book of the Season.

Mark Palmer, a former news editor at the Sunday Telegraph and executive editor of the Daily Express, is editing the magazine. He told British media sources the magazine had been launched partly in response to a "huge surge in popularity" in the sport of polo following the demise of fox hunting.

The Spring issue covers White Birch’s U.S. Open win and features a first-person profile by legendary drummer and polo player Ginger Baker. Baker, 65, who formed the 1960s rock band Cream with Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce, said he was rated at two goals when he was 56. He took up polo in 1974 at the Lagos Polo Club in Nigeria, introduced to the sport by Colin Edwards. Baker said he lives in South Africa and is developing his own polo field and planning a reunion with Cream. 

“Polo had the same effect on me as when I first discovered I was a drummer at the age of 15. I sat in with the band and played the bollocks off their drummer. I thought: ‘Hello, this is something I can do,’” Baker writes.

Hurlingham, published by Hurlingham Media, has a print run of 12,000, and some 5,000 will be distributed abroad according to player/publisher Roderick Vere Nicoll.

The Hurlingham Polo Association is the United Kingdom’s governing body for the sport. For more information on the magazine, or to subscribe, contact hurlingham@hpa-polo.co.uk.

Diane Hensley may be reached at dkheditor@msn.com.The Hurlingham Polo Association is the United Kingdom’s governing body for the sport. For more information on the magazine, or to subscribe, contact hurlingham@hpa-polo.co.uk.
Diane Hensley may be reached at dkheditor@msn.com.