Polo Visionary Bill Ylvisaker
How The Dream Of A Polo-Playing Real Estate Developer Grew Into The Community We Call Wellington
The 1977 decision by original Wellington developers Alcoa and the Investment Corporation of Florida (ICOF) to sell to developer Gould Florida could have been an ordinary business deal, so common then and now. However, it brought to Wellington Gould’s polo-playing CEO Bill Ylvisaker, and in doing so, shifted an ordinary development project into something extraordinary. Join us as we recall this key figure in Wellington history. This story includes reporting by the late Don Brown written for the February 2005 issue of Wellington The Magazine.
If Wellington wanted to build a statue to the “Father of Equestrianism” in the village, there would be little argument that it would bear a striking resemblance to William T. “Bill” Ylvisaker. The vision of today’s upscale, equestrian-based community came directly out of his head.
George J. DuPont Jr., director of operations at the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame, said that Ylvisaker’s importance to Wellington as an equestrian community cannot be overstated. “Without his foresight, without his dream and without his imagination, it would not exist as it is today,” DuPont said.
Ylvisaker, a captain of industry and a renowned sportsman, did more than anyone else to advance the popularity of the sport of polo in Florida. As a player for nearly half a century, he rubbed saddles with royalty, celebrities, artists, industrialists and hard-riding polo players throughout the world. As one of the world’s highest-ranked amateurs, Ylvisaker in his prime was never shy about racing dangerously down the field with the best of the best. Nor was he squeamish when it came to exhibiting the right stuff to build not one, but several billion-dollar business fortunes.
Here in Wellington, Ylvisaker was somewhat more modest. Never one to publicly show off his stature as a wealthy wheeler-dealer, he remained the quintessential “nice guy” you’d like to invite to a family barbecue. Arriving in the 1970s to the patch of swamp and farmland that would become Wellington, even Ylvisaker probably wasn’t sure whether he was building a real estate business or securing a polo legend.
Ylvisaker was CEO of Chicago-based Gould Inc., which bought out Wellington’s original developers in the late 1970s, taking control of the huge, mostly residential project.
“I had a company that looked for new business opportunities. I started buying up land for $50 an acre and acquired as much as I could,” recalled Ylvisaker when interviewed for Wellington The Magazine in 2005. “I got the idea that if I built nice homes and combined it with polo, a lot of people would think that was a good idea.”
The result was what became one of the most exclusive addresses outside the island of Palm Beach — Palm Beach Polo & Country Club.
“It wasn’t much of anything at that time, but we kept getting bigger and bigger. We built some houses and the original polo field. Some players and spectators were interested in those days,” Ylvisaker said. “I knew when we started Polo, they would come. It didn’t happen overnight. It just developed gradually.”
Before long he had created a prestigious enclave of some 800 homes with 45 holes of golf, 14 polo fields and 26 tennis courts. The community was sold a decade later, eventually wound up in bankruptcy under less-knowledgeable hands, and was subsequently acquired by Glenn Straub. But Ylvisaker will forever be the man with the vision. All of Wellington that is equestrian — from the sprawling horse farms to the National Polo Center, from the huge Wellington International showgrounds to the Equestrian Village dressage facility — sprang from his original vision.
DuPont said that Ylvisaker not only wanted to build a world-class polo facility, but he wanted it to be turnkey for players and patrons.
“What made it unusual, within 20 minutes of arriving here, you could be on Worth Avenue or on a horse at Palm Beach Polo… The concept was the horses would be stabled here, and you would be able to stable here. They played all levels of polo here.”
By privately funding the facility, making fields available and space available for stabling, Wellington became a magnet for polo players the world over. “People came here and bought houses in Palm Beach County, and most of them in Wellington,” DuPont said.
Ylvisaker is a member of the Polo Hall of Fame, chaired the U.S. Polo Association from 1970-75, solidly established the sport as a United States powerhouse, founded the Polo Training Foundation, founded Polo Magazine, founded the sport in Wellington, founded the Polo World Cup, developed the sport in Florida, and was a remarkable player in his own right despite injuries that would have sidelined others. Throughout his life, he both played the sport and advanced it in the United States. His trophies could fill a mansion. One of Wellington’s key polo tournaments, the 16-goal Ylvisaker Cup, is named in his honor.
Long before he passed away in 2010 at the age of 85, Ylvisaker well-earned his reputation for working hard and playing hard. His friends included royalty (Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, King Charles III and the late Princess Diana, Major Ronald Ferguson, his daughter Sarah, Duchess of York, and many others) most of whom were polo colleagues. He was a Yale University fraternity brother of President George H.W. Bush.
The current king, back when he was the Prince of Wales, made headlines around the world when he received emergency hospital treatment for heat exhaustion during a tournament at Ylvisaker’s polo field.
“We had a villa set aside overlooking the polo fields for Prince Charles,” recalled Ylvisaker’s daughter and former polo manager Laurie Ylvisaker when interviewed in 2005. “My father had played with his father in England on a number of occasions and knew that Prince Charles would like to have the opportunity to play and watch polo here. He visited the club prior to his marriage to Princess Diana and played before adoring crowds in 90-degree heat. Later that day, he had to be taken to Good Samaritan because of heat exhaustion.”
It was that visit and other subsequent visits that established Wellington as a polo powerhouse. The world media visited, as did the nation’s polo elite. And if they didn’t know Wellington before, they did after.
Both Ylvisaker’s friends and his management style earned him loyalty and respect. In 1980, Fortune magazine listed Ylvisaker as one of the 10 toughest bosses. However, he always enjoyed the respect and comfort of those around him.
When Ylvisaker retired from Gould in the 1980s, instead of pursuing a typical corporate titans’ sedate retirement of a man his age, he started his own highly successful business of buying, building, then selling a series of companies. And he spent much of his twilight years here in the polo-loving community he built.
Born in Minnesota and raised in New Jersey, Ylvisaker’s interest in both business and horses began at an early age. His mother, Winifred, bought him a pony when he was five, which he rode to the small schoolhouse he attended in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. At the age of 12, after seeking advice from a banker, he convinced his father to purchase the family home they were renting. That was the future magnate’s first experience as a “deal maker.”
His interest in horses also grew into hunters and jumpers. By age 13, he was playing polo. Starting with an interscholastic championship and as captain of Yale’s polo team, Ylvisaker rose as an amateur to the rare 7-goal rating. By the end of his playing career, he had three U.S. Open Championships to his name, two Coronation Cups, the Gold Cup, four National 20 Goals and much more.
Ylvisaker did not follow the “family business” of teaching or church service. His grandfather, a founder of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and six of his grandfather’s sons were all ministers in the Norwegian Lutheran Church. (Ylvisaker later received an honorary doctor of law degree from Luther College in 1980.) His father, Lauritz, was a minister, but later attended medical school and became a doctor.
When it became obvious that polo was catching on in Wellington, Ylvisaker and his daughter Laurie hopped a plane to Tampa to lure Gene Mische of Stadium Jumping, who was then hosting the Florida Winter Show Circuit. “We asked him to bring the show’s headquarters here to Wellington,” Laurie recalled in 2005. “There was plenty of land, housing for both owners and entourage, and a full winter lifestyle to complement the effort in the ring.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Here in Wellington, on land provided by Ylvisaker, Mische founded the Winter Equestrian Festival, which today is the longest-running and largest equestrian show series in the world.
Ylvisaker’s hands-on interest in polo was also illustrated by an urban legend that reportedly occurred shortly after the first competitive field was built. After a deluge threatened a polo tournament, Ylvisaker is said to have rented four helicopters to come out and “blow dry” the field, even as guests were having brunch in the clubhouse.
In his later years, Ylvisaker was a staunch advocate of protecting the equestrian community. Shortly after Wellington incorporated, he strongly supported Wellington’s designation of the horse community as an “equestrian preserve” and even opposed building paved roads through the area.
While polo was played in Palm Beach County before Ylvisaker arrived, it was not nearly to the level that he envisioned.
“He wanted to play the highest level in the United States, and he wanted it to be here,” DuPont said, adding that South Florida’s winter climate made it perfect for playing the sport.
But building it was not enough, DuPont said, explaining that Ylvisaker was a master at public relations and getting major sponsorships. “He had a big PR section to get the interest out in his project, and another one of the things that he did very well was the staff that he hired,” DuPont added.
Once polo was established, Ylvisaker expanded his offerings by building a hunter/jumper barn and seeking out Mische.
“They convinced him that this is where he should be,” DuPont said. “That is what made Wellington the equestrian winter capital. We have all the venues, and it is all because of his vision. It has been taken by others to higher levels, but it had to start somewhere, and he started it.”
