DAN'S PAPERS, July 30, 2010 Page 46 www.danshamptons.com
Polo: Exhilaration at 35 mph Photos by Katlean DeMonchy
By Susan Saiter Polo matches draw people who revel in the razzle dazzle of the scene, who love to strut their designer stuff while sipping a potent drink and tapping e-mail addresses into their Blackberrys. “What? Really? There’s a Rob Payne of polo match going on Alegria Team at out there? Oh hey, Bridgehampton Polo cool…horses…riders…a little white ball. Yea-a-a, so where did you say the party tonight is?” You’ll find that scene under the VIP tent at Bridgehampton Polo. But polo has a whole other group of followers, too—the kind whose Ray Bans are actually facing the field, people who might be vicariously galloping along with the players, whalloping that dented little ball past the thundering hourses of four opponents heading toward them in a fury of hooves and mallets, who savor the thrill of scoring a goal as much as scoring a date. The fans who like to do their partying after the match are largely what you’ll find at the Southampton Polo Club, located on Millstone Road. One of those fans is Charles Ferri, formerly working in the investment world, and
who this spring began sponsoring a team that plays many of its games at the Southampton Polo Club. Last Saturday, he talked with a reporter and fans braving the 90 degree heat with no umbrellas, no awnings and definitely no big rollicking tent as he watched his new team, Star Vodka, play. “At the other field, there’s all that glitz and glamour; they’ve totally Hamptoned it up. What I like about this is that it’s pure polo.” (Unfortunately, Star lost to the Kings, a top-rated team. But they are even for the season). Ferri hadn’t always had a lot of time for polo. He’d been to busy working in the world of finance at Bernstein Investment Management and later at Deutsch Bank. But the appeal wore off. “My biggest fear was that I’d find myself waking up in the morning and thinking, “Hey, you have all the money in the world, but you don’t have a life.” For a while, he owned the Star Room, a popular Hamptons night spot. Three years ago, he closed it and looked for a new venture. Making vodka seemed like the right challenge. “I did research, testing. Guys laughed at me when I said I wanted to come out with a new American vodka. I was told to go to Russia,
Poland, Sweden, a place where a little guy can stand up against the giant vodka brands.” The next step was getting the right kind of image for his “boutique” vodka, and last Memorial Day, he met a young woman at a party who knew how. It was Yvonne Morabito, a polo player. By summer, he found himself sponsoring a polo team. American polo teams are semi-pro, but they generally have one or more professional players, like Star Vodka’s Mauricio Devrient and Matias Majul, mixed in with non-pros like Morabito and Steven Sands. Argentine Devrient is a five-goaler. (For perspective, anything above four is pretty amazing.) At one point in his career, he was a six (continued on page 48)
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