A brand new polo club is making its debut at a very old location. The Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook opens its first Sunday-come-and-see-us season today on the world famous turf of the Oak Brook Sports Core.
Surrounded by three lush golf courses, the four playing fields, plus a stick and ball field, serenely await the arrival of the thundering drama that will not only overtake Mother Earth but also capture the fancy of many spectators.
”There are no sports that compare to polo,” Jim Tuohy said. ”It is very mental. Very physical.” His eyes perused the abandoned field one evening near dusk. But an onlooker could tell his heart was playing the game.
”It combines all the sports into one,” Bill O`Leary explained. ”It`s very physical, which people don`t realize. Sure, the horses do the majority of the work, but on a hot day, I am sweating from head to toe and sore the next day from being bumped and hit. But I love doing it, and I can`t wait to play it again.”
Even though he was seated at a table, the tone in his voice told it all. He was chomping at the bit to mount a horse and swing a mallet.
Bill O`Leary and Jim Tuohy, owners of the Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook, are all-American-type people. Tuohy said so himself. No reason to doubt it. A quick check of their pasts reveals they`ve earned their share of athletic letters and real-men reputations in the business world.
”I have a high energy level,” Tuohy said. Impossible to disprove. He moves somewhere near the speed of lightning, a natural for his polo-playing hobby.
The visible passion both men have for the sport is catching. If you hang around with either of them for very long, especially in the vicinity of a polo field, you can`t help but become captivated by the sport. And that`s just the way they want it.
George Alexander says the Blackberry Polo Club, located west of Batavia, is a ”little family club out in the country that doesn`t draw much attention, and we like it that way.” Alexander is a circuit governor for the United States Polo Association, a player, club president and polo grounds owner as well. Just the same, it`s not the limelight his little club is after.
Not so for Tuohy and O`Leary. ”Welcome, families,” they say. The Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook would love the pleasure of your company.
In fact, Janet Frisk, sales manager for the club, said it is going to extend generous hospitality to the general public as well as club members, box holders and those attending special occasions. A hospitality team will educate the public on the sport of polo, she said. They will direct you to your seats, tell you about the food, point you toward the washrooms.
Buzz Rackley, the announcer for the Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook and a 30-year polo player, said he will try to walk spectators through the game via the microphone.
”I really work hard as time permits to explain what`s going on, and after 30 years, I sure hope I`ve got some of it figured out, although there`s days on the field I`m not so sure.”
Lest there be some confusion, polo is not new to Oak Brook. Neither are Rackley, Frisk, publicity person Patty Steinman, most of the players nor O`Leary and Tuohy. What is new is the Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook, the down-to-earth attitudes and the abounding energy.
Also new are 48 stalls in the stabling area, bringing total capacity to about 80 horses; five new paddocks; live palm trees at the club entrance on 31st Street; a sand exercise track for the horses; gallons of spiffy paint, some applied directly by the new owners; and a hands-on, can-do, hard-working enthusiasm.
Steinman said O`Leary and Tuohy have open minds to her ideas as well as those of the players. Although polo has always been a social family sport, she believes ”these fellows seem to have a little bit of a better handle on what they need to do to encourage the family support.” As a club, and with Frisk`s sales skills, they acquired several corporate sponsors: American Airlines, the club`s official airline for international events; the Drake Oakbrook Hotel, which signals the return of a valued sponsor from the old days; Integrated Systems by Rich, which is providing the sound system for the whole season; Red Stripe, a Jamaican beer sure to be a favorite at the Jamaican match and festivities July 7; and Falling Waters, luxury homes in Burr Ridge.
Steinman refers to the Polo and Equestrian Club as a players` club that plays to the spectators and said ”Bill and Jim have done a good job pulling the players together and giving them what`s best as well.
”I mean not only will polo players have the opportunity to play on the world`s greatest polo field-and Oak Brook does have that reputation-but they will have more opportunity for more polo play,” she said. ”More hours on the field. It also gives the players a real hand in the formation of the personality of this club.
”I just see these guys riding in with white hats. They are going to keep polo alive in Oak Brook. They are preserving a tradition in the quality of the sport. In addition to preserving a tradition, they are building a whole lot of their own, which I love to see.”
White hats? Preservation? Did something need to be rescued?
Although Alexander refers to polo as a very small fraternity, polo at Oak Brook comes steeped in decades of premium reputation and swirling mystique, a word that comes up often in connection with polo at Oak Brook. Until this season, the Butler name and the Oak Brook Polo Club were synonymous. Paul Butler founded the Oak Brook Polo Club in 1922. He also founded Oak Brook. After his death in 1981, son Michael took over the operation of the Oak Brook Polo Club.
In January of this year, however, things changed, and, depending on whom you ask and whether they`re talking on or off the record, the views of that change run from elation to sorrow.
Michael Butler refers to the change as a hostile takeover.
Tom Hughes, personal adviser to Butler during his much-publicized bankruptcy but now a partner with Harold Reskin at the Glendale Polo and Entertainment Center, said the Oak Brook Sports Core made a ”preconceived decision” to accept the proposal of a new club. He believes they made this decision rather than accept Butler`s proposal for a new lease agreement, which also had to deal with a $27,000 debt he owed to the village for his previous leasing of the grounds, a lease that was cancelled in December for this very reason.
O`Leary and Tuohy, as well as Chuck McAdams, director of the Oak Brook Sports Core, said the Butler group withdrew its bid before the village had made a final decision. McAdams said, ”If (Butler) withdrew (which he did), it wasn`t because of the Sports Core`s preconceived notion. We worked with Michael with his financial things. We extended him credit on the lease. Generally speaking, a landlord doesn`t let you continue to play if you haven`t paid the rent. And the Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook`s proposal was extremely professionally done and well-organized.”
The way the new guys saw it, it looked like polo at Oak Brook was about to come to a screeching halt: bankruptcy, bad debts, bad feelings. Thus the rescue.
Regardless of how on-the-record and off-the-record conversations go, there is unanimous joy that polo at Oak Brook continues. And most everyone wishes all clubs well-at least on the record.
Although it seems as though the dust has finally settled, there was great confusion for a while concerning the Oak Brook Polo Club, which announced it had not, in fact, folded, but had moved its operation to the Glendale polo grounds. For a while, there was the Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook
(Tuohy and O`Leary) and the Oak Brook Polo Club at Glendale (Butler). And there was the Glendale Polo Club, which had been there all along.
As of mid-May, here`s what Du Page has, although the unfolding saga concerning the Reskin-Hughes-Butler end of it continues to present confusion. Reskin and Hughes are partners in the Glendale Polo and Entertainment Center. O`Leary and Tuohy are owners of the Polo and Equestrian Club of Oak Brook. According to Hughes, the Oak Brook Polo Club that used to operate at Oak Brook but moved to Glendale Heights and was for a while being advertised as the Oak Brook Polo Club at Glendale merged with what used to be known as The Glendale Polo Club, and they are all operating under the name Glendale Polo and Entertainment Center.
The name Oak Brook Polo Club is still registered officially with the USPA, however, and has been awarded some tournaments by same, and Butler wants to make it clear he owns that name, even though Hughes now refers to the Oak Brook Polo Club as ”no actual entity.” The tournaments will be played at the Glendale Polo and Entertainment Center and will be produced by Butler, along with some international matches and celebrity events, but, according to Hughes, will be operated by the Glendale Polo and Entertainment Center.
The Naperville Polo Club is alive and thriving and running a full agenda as well.
So there is a just-right club for everyone. Fact of the matter is, most clubs run tournaments, matches and special events that members from other clubs, and even other countries, play in. One big happy family. One small fraternity. All for the fans` enjoyment. And enjoy they will.
Dorothy Dean Cavanaugh is looking forward to watching another season of polo at Oak Brook. Her late husband, Sam Dean, worked together with Paul Butler when Oak Brook became a village. She has been a polo enthusiast ever since.
”I have really enjoyed polo,” she said. ”It`s a good reason for being out, and I think we all are people watchers, besides the polo, and that`s part of the fun.”
Lisa Gengler, a tireless fundraiser and philanthropic patron of the arts, is excited she and husband Duane are again box holders for the upcoming season at Oak Brook. They have met Tuohy and O`Leary through social functions and entertained them at their home in Oak Brook.
”My husband said, you know, he really liked them because they were regular, so we`ll buy a box,” Gengler said.
Regular guys, indeed.
Tuohy, 39, of Park Ridge, is in the wholesale shoe business. He has played polo for 20 years. He bought his first horse before he even bought a car, according to brother Tom Tuohy, legal adviser and treasurer for the club and partner in Bledsoe and Tuohy, an entertainment and business law firm. Jim has gone on to become a respected horse trainer as well as an avid polo player.
O`Leary, 38, and owner of Devon Cartage and Warehouse in Chicago, has played polo for only about three years. In fact, he learned to ride a horse just about that long ago.
”I always loved horses,” he said during an interview at the Polo and Equestrian Club offices in the Sports Core complex. He finally got around to taking a lesson and ”really got hooked on it. Really loved it. After a couple lessons, I was just really hooked on the speed already. The faster I got going, the more I enjoyed it, and as long as the horse stopped, it kept making me want to do more and more. I fell off the horse many times learning, but I did it as a crash course.”.
He has a wonderful time telling the story. Like Tuohy, laughter comes naturally. He tells about the time he was learning proper horsemanship and the instructor would be yelling out at him, querying him as to whether or not he was doing it right as he was moving along at what seemed near break-neck speed.
”`I don`t care,”` he would yell back. ”`I`m just hanging on for dear life!` I kept looking for the brake peddle, but it wasn`t there.”
Polo came as a natural extension. O`Leary has always been an avid and active sports enthusiast. ”I think playing all the other sports helped, too, because it taught me the fundamentals. Baseball helped with hand-eye coordination. I could always hit the ball. But being able to ride well enough to get the horse to the ball …,” he said laughing, ”… a challenge in and of itself!”
Tuohy and O`Leary met when O`Leary decided to buy a polo pony. ”I knew he would excel in polo right away,” Tuohy said about O`Leary while he proudly walked a visitor around the spruced-up grounds at Oak Brook. ”He had good hand-eye coordination, a muscular build . . . and an all-around athletic ability to be an excellent prospect and polo player. If you watch him play, he`ll make an amazing shot for a beginner.”
Tuohy comes with his own athletic past: Not only does he have a background in hunter-jumper competition at ages 19 and 20, but he rode bulls bareback in the rodeo six years later for a spell.
Tuohy, a bachelor, said you don`t have to be wealthy to play polo: ”You have to be reasonably successful. You have to be a sportsman. It is a gentleman`s sport.” It wasn`t delivered as a chauvinistic statement, rather as a commentary on the properness.
Sherri Martin, who will play this season on the Service Merchandise Team with husband Nick, talks about the sport this way: ”Once you pick up a mallet, you are a goner. It is a neat sport. It is different than anything else I have ever been in with horses. People tend to be more laid back.
”Maybe because it`s a sport. You get out there and you get sweaty and dirty and everybody is there to have a good time. And then you kick back with each other and have a beer or two and discuss the game.”
Martin said most of their friends are playing at Oak Brook this year, and she wishes Tuohy and O`Leary luck, although like many, she feels it was sad to see Butler go ”out of there because it`s like the ending of an era.
”But I think Tuohy and O`Leary have been working very hard wanting to make this work and they have really been doing a lot of promotion. They may have what it takes to really get it rolling.”
Alexander of the USPA said Tuohy and O`Leary are ”certainly bringing a younger attitude toward polo at Oak Brook. They`ve both been in business for a long time, and they`re sound individuals. If they are surrounding themselves with the right kind of people, running a polo club shouldn`t be any problem, and to the best of my knowledge, they`re doing that.”
One person who is involved to the hilt is O`Leary`s wife, Carol. Not only is she club secretary, but she is, as Tuohy puts it, a work horse. ”She does the work of 10 people,” he said. ”She works at least 20 hours a day non-stop. She is a wonderful asset to the club.”
Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Carol spends from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at the polo offices while their children, Brent, 10, and Brianne, 8, attend 5th and 2nd grade at Anne M. Jeans School in Hinsdale. Tuesday and Thursday mornings she teaches pre-school for the Burr Ridge Park District.
”It`s a lot for me to do and I have absolutely no free time at all,”
she said. ”It`s totally all-consuming. You do it (polo preparations) all day long, you do it all night long, you do it all weekend long.”
But, she says, she loves it.
The stage is set for exciting things. ”I think this new group is going to attract some attention,” said McAdams, the director of the Sports Core.
”I see them in action on a day-to-day basis, and I feel real confident that this is going to be a wonderful season here.
”These people will do a good job and I`ve been in the hospitality entertainment field my entire career. You can tell that they`re organized and they know what they`re doing. It`s not as if I`m an amateur making this statement.
”Basically, they will run a real good show. I think this group is more plugged into the `90s and the other (Butler) group was more plugged into the
`60s. I think it`s appropriate to share that we`re moving into the `90s with the right group.”
And that`s on the record.
