Word: hitchcock
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Most U.S. citizens never saw a game of polo, but people who got no closer to one than the rotogravure sections knew that Tommy Hitchcock played it. For nearly 20 years he was the greatest polo player in the U.S. and probably in the world...
Mother's Boy. Three years ago 41-year-old Tommy Hitchcock won a commission in the Army Air Forces. "Polo is exciting," he once remarked, "but you can't compare it to flying in wartime. That's the best sport in the world." He never got back into combat. When he died he was a lieutenant colonel doing tactical research for the Ninth Air Force...
Like an acrobat's child, Tommy Hitchcock was trained for his career almost from infancy. His father, Thomas Hitchcock Sr., was captain of the U.S.'s first international polo team (1886), later became the country's No. 1 steeplechase trainer. Tommy's mother was called "the Mother of American Polo." She was Louise Eustis Hitchcock, daughter of James Biddie Eustis, Grover Cleveland's Ambassador to France. Prime mover in the horsy affairs of Aiken, S.C., she set Tommy in a saddle when he was three, started his polo training when he was five...
Meadow Larks. At Long Island's Meadow Brook Club, Mrs. Hitchcock trained young poloists most of her adult life. When Tommy was ten she organized the Meadow Larks. Among them: F. Skiddy von Stade Jr., Raymond and Winston Guest, Mike Phipps, Douglas Burden, Pete Bostwick, Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney. Lean, vigorous, hard-riding Mrs. Hitchcock broke her ankle in a riding accident when she was 61, broke an arm the next year, had her last fall at 68 when her horse balked at a stiff hurdle, threw her, broke her neck...
...Tommy Hitchcock played competitive polo for 23 years and was a ten-goal man for 16 of them-the greatest polo feat of all time. With Devereux Milburn, he accelerated the game. He turned what had traditionally been a defensive position (No. 3) into an aggressive one. He turned a short-passing game into a fast, hard, long-walloping one. He was a whirlwind at infighting, and probably the most powerful and accurate hitter of all time...