Most Americans don’t understand polo (the sport, and not the one that’s played in water) but at yesterday’s third annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic on Governors Island, that didn’t stop the crowds from enjoying themselves. While most attendees left without knowing how to spell “chukker,” both the public side (which was free, although bottles of champagne, the only available booze, were going for $70 and $90 dollars a pop) and the private side (for which guests forked over either $250 for a bright yellow picnic blanket and endlessly flowing champagne, or $25,000 for a table in the VIP tent) seemed to be having a jolly good time.

What was there, besides the good old golden bubbly to keep the hordes happy? Seeing Prince Harry, who played on the losing BlackRock team, fall from his horse early in the match seemed to perk up the masses. Also, the stomping of the divots roused guests from a heat-and-alcohol-induced stupor, especially when it became clear that taking part in this Pretty Woman-consecrated tradition would allow them to get closer to the dashing Polo model (as in the shirts, which Americans do know and brought out in pastel droves for the game) member of the winning Black Watch team, Nacho Figueras.

Benefiting the American Friends of Sentebale, an organization founded by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, the affair was co-chaired (along with Lucy and Mark Cornell and Delfina Blaquier with husband Nacho Figueras) by Peter Brant, the entrepreneur-cum-art-collector-cum-horseman and Jeff Koons devotee. 

The event was far less star-studded than last year’s iteration, which saw the likes (and hats) of Madonna, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, and Chloe Sevigny. Instead, yesterday saw the La Force Stevens legions of white-dress-clad girls leading Alexis Bledel, Val Kilmer, Russell Simmons, and Susan Sarandon (on crutches) down the red carpet — after A-listers Mary-Kate Olsen and Kate Bosworth dropped out at the last minute.

ARTINFOs favorite moment? When one guest, sipping champagne and dreamily gazing at the skyline of lower Manhattan, which served as a startling backdrop for the idyllic polo grounds, missed the fact that the ball was rocketing toward the mesh curtain that separated her blanket from the field. When the ball slammed into her, she looked up indignantly at the horses thundering past and exclaimed, “Excuse me, that’s my foot!”