The polo swing: grip, shoulders and a pendulum arm.

A polo swing is made from a moving pony, at the end of a long cane, close to the pony's own legs and head. Schools such as Houston Polo Club's therefore teach it in stages: on foot, then on a wooden horse, then at the walk. The points below are how a top player and several schools describe the swing. They are principles to discuss with your instructor, not a method to try on your own.

The grip and the sling

England captain Luke Tomlinson described his grip to Shortlist in April 2011. He holds the stick out in front as he would a golf club, puts the thumb through the sling and wraps the sling around the back of the hand, then takes a V grip with the fingers spread, which he likens to a tennis grip. The mallets page covers the stick itself.

The offside forehand

Dallas Burston Polo Club's guide (January 2020) calls the offside forehand the first shot players learn, and the most common, powerful and effective. It can be played as a full shot or as a half shot to tap or dribble the ball along. Tomlinson's description of it:

• He sits in the half seat, slightly off the saddle (see the polo seat).
• He aims to meet the ball about 25 cm from the pony's front leg.
• He twists the body so the left shoulder points forward.
• He swings with a straight, relaxed arm, like a pendulum.

He says the offside backhand is the reverse of this. The other strokes are on the four strokes page.

Straight or bent arm: sources differ

Tomlinson describes a straight, relaxed arm, and Dallas Burston Polo Club lists hitting with a bent elbow as a common error that costs power and control. A different tip appears in Horse Network's 2015 lesson report from Palo Alto Polo Holiday, where instructor Emily Hordijk is quoted as saying that keeping the arm at about 90 degrees and swinging in one fluid motion helps with the fatigue of swinging for long periods. That tip rests on a single lesson account, and none of the sources explains whether the two descriptions refer to different parts of the swing, such as carrying the stick versus striking. Your instructor is the right person to settle it for your own swing.

Learning the pendulum before the pony

Two schools in our sources start the swing away from a moving pony:

• Coutts Polo at the Palace, Abu Dhabi. The National's 2012 lesson report says students practised the pendulum motion with wooden mallets before going near a pony, and were taught above all not to hit the pony's head or rear.
• Houston Polo Club. Horse Nation's May 2015 report says beginners first leaned over with the mallet head flat on the ground at the halt, the walk and the trot, to learn how far away the ball would be, and only then practised half swings at those paces.

The wooden horse and hitting cage are covered on the practice page.

What the rules say about the swing

The rulebooks restrict some swings:

• HPA 2026 rules, Rule 34: examples of what may be considered dangerous play include a full shot in a melee or ride-off, a full-power shot that hits a player or pony in a legitimate position at close quarters, and swinging the stick wildly near other players, including in a "windmill or helicopter" fashion.
• USPA 2024 Outdoor Rules, Rule 33: windmill or helicopter mallet swinging, as in appealing for a foul, is listed as unsportsmanlike conduct. Rule 28 also bars reaching over and across or under and across an opponent's mount to hit the ball, and hitting into or among the legs of an opponent's mount. The USPA revises its rules each year, so check the current book.

Both bodies' rules on hooking an opponent's stick in the middle of a swing are on riding off and hooking.

Swing research

We found little scientific work on the polo swing. Gretchen Oliver and colleagues at Auburn University (Oliver, Gilmer, Barfield and Brittain, ISBS Proceedings Archive volume 36, 2018) measured the trunk and upper-limb movement of professional players hitting offside forehands from a stationary wooden horse, at three moments: the take-away, the top of the backswing and ball contact. They found significant differences between male and female professionals and called for research on live play. None of the research we read showed a link between swing mechanics and injury, in either direction.