62 SIDELINES SEPTEMBER 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
2010, a division which has a $185
billion real estate portfolio. With his
expertise in real estate, he was able
to put together a group of investors,
including Oakleigh Thorne and
Bruce Colley, to buy Mashomack
from the Daly estate. (Note: There
are two Thorne family members
on the Millbrook equestrian scene.
“Big Oakleigh” descended from
one of the founders of the Millbrook
Hunt and his son, “Little Oakleigh,”
who fields his own team. According
to John, Big Oakleigh was among
the first of those who dug into their
own pockets to save Mashomack
from the developers).
It took three years, but the group
closed the deal on the Mashomack
Club in 2006. The biggest challenge
was restoring the old cattle barns
and making them habitable for polo
ponies. “Until the ’50s, when Dan
Daley moved in, Mashomack was
a large working farm where beef
cattle were fattened for the butcher,” John said.
John had his first taste of polo 17 years ago, at the age of 43,
and “just fell in love” with the sport. He moved his family to an
estate in Amenia, 15 minutes from Mashomack, and established
his own polo team, Smithfield Farms.
Juan Olivera, the polo manager at Mashomack, has high praise
for John’s skill on the polo field. “He plays back,” said Juan,
explaining that this is the Number 4 position and the key player in
defending a team’s goal. “He has very soft hands with the horse,
sits the canter really well and he has a good eye for horses; he’s
very well-mounted.” John
(together with Bruce) is
rated as a 1-goal player.
But while he fields his
own team, John says he
doesn’t want to be “just a
patron, spending money
on the team and riding
around watching and
letting the other people
do the work.”
His
Smithfield
Farms team has won
several
Mashomack
polo tournaments, and
John himself won the
Hermes Trophy for Most
Valuable Player at this
summer’s Mashomack
International Challenge.
On the afternoon he
was interviewed for this
article, he’d just flown
back from a 72-hour
round trip to inspect
By Don Rosendale
When John Klopp plays a few
chukkers at the Mashomack Polo
Club in Pine Plains, New York,
he’s carrying more than just a polo
mallet on his shoulder. If not for
his organizational skills and the
checkbooks of friends he enlisted,
polo in Millbrook might still be played
on a nearby back pasture.
Instead, Mashomack players
enjoy a 2,000-acre estate with six
polo fields, a regulation arena for
winter play, stalls for 250 horses
and a clubhouse that looks as if it
belongs in
Architectural Digest
.
Pine Plains sits on the outskirts
of what’s known as the “Millbrook
Hunt Country,” where there’s a long
equestrian tradition. The Millbrook
Hunt ran its first fox to ground in
1907, and the area also plays host
to the Fitch’s Corner and Millbrook
horse trials.
But the first polo matches in the Millbrook area that anyone
can remember were played in the 1980s when Eric Rosenfeld, a
New York City lawyer, flattened his back pasture and invited a few
friends for a match. When Eric gave up polo and sold Chestnut
Ridge Farm, the polo action moved 16 miles north to Mashomack
and Pine Plains.
And that’s when John’s formidable organizational skills came
into play. John explains that the Mashomack “club” was not so
much a club in those days as the idiosyncratic empire of one Dan
Daly, who had moved his club from Shelter Island to Pine Plains
in 1979.
“If Dan Daly liked you,”
John remembered, “you
could become a member
of his ‘club.’ But if Dan
Daly didn’t like you …
don’t ask.”
Dan died in 2003. “He
hadn’t left his affairs in
very good order,” said
John.
Mashomack’s
broad plains, not far
off the Taconic State
Parkway, were a prize for
real estate developers.
That’s
when
John
stepped up.
A graduate of the
Wharton
Business
School and a long-time
serious player in the New
York real estate arena,
John has been co-CEO
of Morgan Stanley’s real
estate investment since
e
Polo
John Klopp Saves the Day
The winning What2WearWhere team for the 2014 Mashomack challenge:
(left to right) Nick Bienstock, Parker Gentry Thorne, John Klopp and Michel
Dorignac.
Karen and John Klopp
All photos by Rebecca Barldridge
