The clubs suit in playing cards began as Mamluk polo sticks
Polo was so beloved by the Mamluk elite of Egypt and the Levant that polo sticks became a suit in their playing cards. Europeans, who barely knew the game, turned those sticks into the clubs of Latin decks. The sport itself goes back to Persian chovgan, first played around the 6th century BCE.
Chovgan was played in Persia and Central Asia from roughly the 6th century BCE to the 1st century CE, probably beginning as a simple game among Iranian peoples before being formalised into a national sport of the nobility, played by women as well as men. Parthian kings and nobles patronised it, and under the Sasanians it was a court pastime and part of princely education; Shapur II learned it at seven in 316 CE. A rougher relative, buzkashi or kokpar, survives in parts of Central Asia.
As cavalry training it travelled far, reaching Arabia, India and Tibet and, by the Middle Ages, Japan. Theodosius II built a stadium for it inside Constantinople's Great Palace early in the 5th century, where the Byzantines called it tzykanion. Basil I was a fine player, while Emperor Alexander died of exhaustion during a match and John I of Trebizond from an injury in one. Abbasid Baghdad kept a large ground outside its walls, with a 13th-century gate named after it; the Mongol rulers of Persia and the Safavids kept up the game, and Abbas I laid out Isfahan's Naqsh-i Jahan Square as a polo field in the 17th century. Saladin, a skilled player, and Baybars encouraged it in their courts.
The modern game took shape in India before spreading to the West. English borrowed its name from the Balti word for ball, polo, related to Tibetan pulu. Nicknamed the Sport of Kings, it draws high-society spectators and sponsorship; the international federation has well over 100 member countries, 16 have professional play, and it was an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1936.
Field polo uses a grass pitch 300 by 160 yards, while arena polo uses a dirt ring 300 by 150 feet. Two teams of four drive a ball with wooden mallets between goalposts at up to 35 miles per hour. An outdoor match of four to eight seven-minute chukkas takes around 90 minutes to two hours, with riders changing horses along the way.
Source: Polo
