History

John Elliott Cowdin

A player with the famed Rockaway Club, John E. Cowdin achieved a 10-goal handicap in 1894. Cowdin played on the American team in the 1902 Westchester Cup series and was a winner of the first U.S. Open Championship in 1904 with the Wanderers.

His other titles include the Association and Added Cups, the Governor's Challenge Cup and the Senior Championship in 1896, 1899, 1902 and 1903.

In 1890, when the U.S. Polo Association was first organized, he was an original committee member.

Playing with and rated on a par with the likes of Foxhall Keene, he was regarded as a formidable "great" of his era. According to some, he and his Meadow Brook team so dominated and surpassed all other players and teams at that time that the handicap system, introduced in 1888, was said to have been found necessary and desirable largely on account of his and his team's unrivaled superiority.