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Justo del Carril started his professional career fourteen years ago, in 1988, when he traveled to the USA for the first time to work in Potomac, Virginia. After a summer season there, he was hired by the Denver Polo Club in Colorado as the club pro, and it wasn’t long before beginner players started to approach him for lessons.
Justo’s first thoughts were "No problem. How hard could it be to teach someone something that he had been doing since he was 10 years old?" To his surprise, it turned out to be quite a challenge. Have you ever been asked to explain simple English grammar to a foreigner? You and I have been speaking English since…well, since we can remember, and yet, teaching it to somebody else is neither natural nor easy. So after a first class with a confused beginner, he decided to take a few days to reflect.
Following some solitary stick and ball sessions, and plenty of time to think in order to put all his ideas into words and actions that people could easily understand, he went back to the field with his first student and things started to move along. That is how Justo began teaching both group and individual lessons. Through the observation of himself and other players he started to perfect the explanation of each technique, using metaphors and comparisons with other sports in order to relate more easily to actions that his students were already familiar with. A golf player could relate his polo swing to his golf swing; a tennis player could find similarities with his serve; and anybody at all could follow Justo’s instructions to achieve a perfect grip.
A couple of years later Justo went on to run a polo school at Cedar Lake Polo Club in New Jersey. In just six months the club had fifty members. From bankers to lawyers to neurosurgeons, all these professionals with no previous polo experience drove an hour three times a week to Blairstown where they took lessons, participated in clinics, and, in no time at all, were playing games. These students now had a new demand for their teacher. Accustomed, as they are, to seeing things in writing, they began asking Justo to repeat his ideas, to jot them down on paper, to give them notes so they could remember what they had been told during the lesson for when they were practising on their own. The notes piled up, needless to say, and were left lying around on napkins and the like until he decided to put them in a scrapbook for further reference.
That is how, in 1998, he began his book: Essential Tips: POLO, gathering all the bits of information that he has constantly been using in lessons over the years and putting them with descriptive photographs which were taken by the the most renowned professional polo photographers to best illustrate his tips. It has taken quite a while to put all this together in his spare time between polo trips around the world, but, as Justo says, this has actually helped him achieve better insight on the project.
Justo finally started the design process of Essential Tips, Polo in Dubai during the year 2000 and the book will be fresh off the press at the end of this year. The book is actually a practical polo manual. It doesn’t really go into interpreting rules or the "academics" of polo. Right from the drawing board, this has been conceived as a reference you can take out on the field. Which doesn’t mean you should be reading on the back of a horse, but you get the idea. Instructions are always clear and concise, and, most importantly, well illustrated, so you can see each technique and play pictured in different stages.
One of Justo’s goals has been to contribute to the process of demystifying polo as an obscure and expensive sport meant only for the elite. So the book starts from the basics: Where did polo come from? What is the object of the game and, briefly, how is it played? What equipment do you need? What should you look for in a polo mallet? It then gradually works its way up, from how to grip and carry your mallet to the swing and different types of shots (including how to aim and actually hit the ball). The book also covers the positions of each member of the team on the field and then goes on to concepts like hooking bumping, crossing and fouling. The last chapter is a very useful quick reminder of points that players should heed during games as well as when stick and balling on their own.
So, if you started out in polo not long ago, or are interested in playing, pick up a copy of Essential Tips: Polo. He’s very accessible and will be happy to answer any of your questions or just get you started on the road to playing the game.
For more information about Justo del Carril, click here |
