Experts will tell you two things are needed to win at polo. Something to chase the ball with, and something to whack it with once you’ve caught up with it. Ponies are straightforward enough, but there’s a definite air of mystery around the polo mallet.
Greg Glue of Polo Splice is a master of the dark art, having been repairing mallets since the 1980s, and making new ones for the best part of 20 years. His clients range from top pros to rank amateurs, and he takes pride in sourcing perfect sticks for all – from sturdy novice mallets to the whippy weapons wielded by the pros.
How many polo mallets does Polo Splice make?
GG. Around 2,000 a year. All our canes are individually selected, which means I personally inspect around 10,000 canes on an annual trip to Malaysia. I have only a few seconds to look at each one, assessing them for size, weight, flex, and overall quality. The heads are Tiga hardwood, grown in northern Argentina and pre-shaped in a range of sizes and weights, and we import around 5,000 a year. We need that many for the other side of business, which is repairing between 5 and 6,000 broken sticks every year.
That’s a lot!
GG. A pro at the very top of the game might use 100 sticks a year, while 6 to 7 goalers will use 25 to 30. Even players at the bottom probably have 10 or so. On top of that we have anything up to 250 sticks in the workshop for repair at a time, and we’re literally taking sticks in and posting repairs back to customers every day. Scott and Dan have been with me in the workshop for 20 and 10 years respectively, so we’re pretty good at it.
Who are your best customers?
GG. In the old days the top pros would come in and look at the canes, and get a feel for them with a balance weight before we made them up. You barely see the current generation of pros between games these days – they all rush back to their Xboxes and send in their ‘pilots’ instead, who need everything done at top speed.
The worst customers are the ones who don’t understand that a new polo stick can last a year, a month or a day. It’s a piece of wood that you get wet, beat the hell out of, and it is always going to break. Luckily they can almost always be repaired.
What makes a polo stick ‘special’?
GG. There’s a perfect weight and flex for everyone, but a lot is in the player’s head. Or people look at what the Argentinians are doing and suddenly want the same – it’s like fashion, and the ‘perfect stick’ changes year to year.
Then you’ve got the players who are really attached to their sticks, who put so much money into repeated repairs that over time they could have bought five new ones. It’s like Trigger’s broom – they’ve played with the same stick for 20 years, but only 5 inches in the middle is original!