Prince Harry was victorious on the polo field last weekend during the Royal Salute Polo Challenge, but the Duke of Sussex may have had an advantage over the other teams in the round-robin charity match benefitting Sentebale, the organization he founded to support children in Lesotho and Botswana. Prince Harry’s team included the English player Malcolm Borwick and even more importantly, 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso, who could have been the secret to their team’s win.
“Playing with Adolfo Cambioso, that’s like going out and playing 18 holes with Tiger Woods. It’s an absolute privilege to do so,” Borwick said prior to taking the field on Friday. “He’s the global icon of our sport over the last 25 years and he’s playing with Prince Harry and myself, as he’s giving his time to the charity as much as we are, and that’s just an extraordinary privilege for us because these icons only come around once in a generation.”
The Duke and Borwick’s team, officially called Royal Salute Sentebale, went on to win Royal Salute Challenge, which was held at Grand Champions Polo Club in Wellington, FL, in a 3-1 victory. Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, presented the winning team with a trophy during the award ceremony. It was announced just a day before the match that the Duke and Duchess would be involved in project about professional polo, according to Deadline, as part of their multiyear deal with Netflix.
The finals for the U.S Open Polo Championships is scheduled to be played on April 21st, and whether the Duke and Duchess — or the Netflix cameras — will be in attendance is unknown as of yet.
“Right now, we’re at the end of the U.S. polo season,” Borwick explained, noting that the professional tour spends January through April in Wellington, before going to Europe for the summer and traveling to Argentina for October through December. “So, today’s event with Sentebale is an additional event, it’s a one-off on the professional calendar. It’s a celebration of the Sentebale charity and the Royal Salute Miami edition launch.” The match officially marked the launch of the brand’s 21-Year-Old Miami Polo Edition.
Along with being a professional polo player, Borwick also holds the title of Royal Salute World Polo Ambassador, a Scotch whisky that has had connections to the sport for more than 15 years. The Royal Salute 21-Year-Old Miami Polo Edition is the sixth edition in the brand’s Polo Collection, and mock-ups of the emblematic pink bottles of the liquor served as the main décor in the spectator section, where Markle sat with Nacho Figueras’ wife, Delfina, and Serena Williams, for the majority of the match.
Photo courtesy of Magrino PRPrior to his partnering with Royal Salute, “I was adamant we needed to create commercial relationships within the sport,” explained Borwick. While polo events are often sponsored by companies selling private jets, and top-shelf champagne, few brands receive the prominent placement of Royal Salute on Friday: The liquor’s name was displayed not only in the event title, but as well as on the jerseys of the players.
“As a brand, we want to support the sport of polo and not just be a vulture or a leech,” Borwick said. “It has to be symbiotic relationship. So we created this platform where Royal Salute started supporting small polo events around the world. The relationship we have created between the brand and the sport has grown far greater than anything we could have ever imagined.”
While spectators can purchase tickets to the U.S Open Polo Championships held throughout the season at the National Polo Center in Wellington, special events like the Royal Salute Polo Cup are by invitation-only. Guests for the event included 300 hand-picked spectators invited by the brand, Sentebale, and Grand Champions Polo Club.
