Nicolas Roldan was destined to be a polo player. He grew up around horses and polo, and made his way through junior polo as soon as he was old enough. His first chance at the big leagues was trial by fire, but he didn't skip a beat. He proved his mettle and hasn't looked back since. While polo has almost entirely been on the upswing for him, he suffered a small setback when his rating was lowered last year. Undeterred, he keeps looking ahead, and all he sees is 10 goals.

Nic grew up around the Pony Express polo organization so horses were a natural part of his life and riding them became second-nature. His parents put him on a horse when he was a toddler and he was riding on his own within a few years. Soon he was riding with a mallet in his hand. He was also around a lot of very good high-goal polo pros like Bautista and Gonzalo Heguy.

My dad managed the team and was a professional so we were always around horses. If we weren't around the barn, we were watching a polo game. If we weren't watching a game, we were doing something else polo-related," Nic recalls.

His dad taught him how to ride and play and Nic went on to play in Florida's junior polo leagues and he showed a lot of talent. Meanwhile, during the week he was still your average kid, going to school and playing a variety of sports, including soccer, baseball, tennis, golf and hockey. A natural athlete, he excelled at everything he played. "Honestly, I have always loved polo and going to the barn, but when I was probably 13 or 14, polo wasn't one of my passions," Nic says. "I love sports and I was playing so many other sports at the time."

It was especially difficult when none of his school friends had any connection to polo. "None of my friends had any idea about polo. Every time I'd leave school early for a game or practice, they couldn't understand what I was doing and why. They thought it was very fascinating and it was a cool thing, leaving school early to play a sport," says Nic.

Even with all the other sports he was playing, he still continued to compete in the kids' leagues. One day when he was 15, Nic was playing in a kids' match on Field No. 1 at Palm Beach Polo and Country Club. The USPA Gold Cup was being played during that time and there was a 26-goal Gold Cup game on Field No. 3. The Escue team was already out of contention but was playing its last game in the tournament when sponsor Shimmy Quraeshi got hurt. The team needed a replacement quickly.

They called my dad and were like, 'Hey, we'd like to have your son play,'" remembers Nic. "That was my first time going in. I had never played an adult tournament, ever. Back then, I was really small. I didn't mature and build up until later when I was older. Back then young kids didn't really get the opportunities to play in the higher-goal like they do now. Now you see 12- and 13-year-old kids playing the 4-goal and 8-goal. I had never played in a 12- or 14-goal or anything. I just jumped straight into the 26-goal."

Not only had Nic never played in adult polo before, and never anything that fast, he had never as much as sat on any of the horses he was about to play. And he had never played with 10-goalers, like brothers Sebastian and Pite Merlos. South African Sugar Erskine, 6-goals at the time, filled out the team. Nic says none of it bothered him.

You know, at that age you don't have time to think. I didn't even have time to be nervous. It was just like, get out there, do what you have got to and have fun with it," Nic says. "The Merlos' and Sugar made it clear that I didn't need to worry about anything, just have fun. I mean I was 15 years old. I was so tiny."

Nic says it was a great experience and the pros were awesome with him, encouraging him and being really positive. The team was entered in the next 26-goal, the U.S. Open, but Quraeshi was unable to play so the team asked if Nic could keep playing with them and he did. "We played the U.S. Open and ended up winning, and I was like, Wow, this is definitely it," says Nic. The excitement of the win helped make polo more of a passion for him.

The team had beaten Isla Carroll led by 10-goal Memo and 9-goal Carlos Gracida. "It was an extremely amazing experience and then I went to play with Carlos and Memo for the whole summer," Nic said. Nic started 1998 at an A-rating, but the following year was already 3 goals. In three years he was rated 6 goals. The opportunities kept coming and he was learning from the some of the sport's best players. He played with Pony Express for two years and was mentored by Bautista and Gonzalo Heguy.

If he was going to be a professional polo player, it became apparent he would need his own polo horses. He would get a good old pony from somebody that didn't want it and took what he could get. "My parents never had enough money to purchase horses for me. Luckily, my father worked for Pony Express and Bob [Daniels] helped me out greatly with horses in the beginning. He gave me horses and as my handicap started getting higher, I started building and saving. Bob helped me out by saying, 'Take these six or eight horses' and he gave me a payment plan," Nic says. "Then slowly but surely, with each job I got, I would put all the money into buying horses.

Obviously it takes a long time, but the most important thing in polo is all the money that you earn is going to be invested right back into horses. That is the key for any young guys wanting to do this. Focus on mounting themselves as best as possible. Don't go buy a house and a Mercedes. Investing constantly in horses is going to make you better. There is no secret to it."

With the right horses, Nic is confident he will reach the pinnacle of the sport. He recently bit the bullet and paid top dollar for two horses, Tulsa and Francis, to help him get there. "In the past year I've invested a lot of money in horses, pretty much everything," says Nic. "It hurts, but they are the type of horses that are going to get me to 10 goals. They are the sort of horses I need now. [Getting to 10 goals] is a lot about luck, trying to get on a good team, and winning, but it is mostly about horses."

Nic's new horses will be the cherry on top of the quality string he has been working hard to buildup. He says every aspiring high-goal player needs at least six to eight horses that stand out about the rest, in addition to another half dozen or so to fill out a string to compete in the 26-goal level. Nic has 17 horses quality enough to play 20- goal, and eight to 10 that can step up to the 26-goal.

While breeding polo horses has changed quite a bit, with first embryo transfers and then cloning, Nic has decided to stay away from breeding horses. "I started breeding horses about two years ago in Argentina. I had about 25 embryos, 15 that were on the ground and 10 more on the way. Last year I [asked myself] what I was doing. I don't have a farm in Argentina and don't have a trustworthy person, like a family member, to maintain them. Organizing the breeding program is a lot of work. There is a process that goes into making sure those babies become as strong and healthy as possible. So, I decided to sell everything," explains Nic. "Since I'm not there in Argentina, it just didn't make sense."

During the high-goal season, he gets all of his horses fit and ready to play then he rotates them, never getting to the bottom of any of them so they will last the four-month season. He turns the string out for a few months before summer.

In the fall, Nic heads to Argentina. Though he discontinued his breeding program, he keeps a string of 12 playing horses at a barn near Adolfo Cambiaso's La Dolfina. He has a sponsor there and plays in two tournaments hosted by La Dolfina, the Diamond and Sapphire Cups, and he plays in Ellerstina's Gold Cup, as well as the Camara de Diputados. He hopes to one day play in and win the Argentine Open but realizes building a string for that caliber of polo is extremely difficult.

In his 15 years or so of high-goal polo, Nic has an impressive collection of trophies next to his U.S. Open trophy including from wins in the C.V. Whitney, the Pacific Coast Open, the Silver Cup, the Ylvisaker Memorial, the Joe Barry Memorial, the Gold Cup, the Texas Open, The Monty Waterbury and the East Coast Open.

Aside from his historic U.S. Open win, his most memorable time in polo was playing the 26-goal with Adolfo Cambiaso and Matias Magrini, which he describes as very relaxed. "It was pretty unbelievable to play with them. We won every game by like five or six goals and we won the final by eight goals," says Nic.

He was raised to 9 goals, his highest rating, in 2009. Nic says,"I may have been playing 9 goals, but we didn't really win anything. I don't feel like it would have changed if I had stayed at 8 or went to 9 goals but it was good for me. I realized I had to work that much more."

He had a tough high-goal season in Florida in 2010 while playing with Piaget. The team didn't win any notable games and Nic was lowered to 8 goals. Still, he says he didn't let it get him down. "I just put my head down and said, 'I know I play 9 goals, I know I can play 10-goals.' I'm still young. It is just a matter of luck and being on the right team. The moment you get on the right team and you start winning, you are back up to 9 goals. And then you win a big tournament and you have 10.

If you aren't on the right team, there is no cohesion between the players, you aren't having fun with it and it's done. You lose all your confidence and take a step back. ... Last year I had just gotten to 9 goals and with a little bit of help I could have maybe stayed at 9 goals, but it's fine. I took it as a learning lesson. I may not have improved my polo but I feel like I improved psychologically. I matured as a player," explains Nic.

He ended the year on a high note. His maturity showed last fall when he led the Orchard Hill team to victory in the 20-goal Silver Cup over Barrington Hill in Aiken, South Carolina. "Nic played a perfect game," polo veteran Jack Whittemore told writer Alex Webbe at the time. "He showed a maturity that I hadn't see before. As well as the other members of the team were playing, I thought Nic made the difference." George DuPont, director of the Museum of Polo echoed those sentiments. It seems others agreed as Nic was named MVP.

Aside from being a professional polo player, Nic wants to help expose the sport of polo and make it more mainstream. "I'd love to do that. I want to help. I want to see the sport grow and anything I can do to see it grow, I'll do," Nic says.

In doing so, Nic is trying to get more corporate sponsorship involved in the sport. He is currently the brand ambassador for Piaget and had done some modeling, similarly to professional polo player and Polo Ralph Lauren model Nacho Figueras. "You can only make so much money in polo and I feel like there is a lot more money to be made outside of it through corporate sponsorship, like in other sports. Sports are evolving. Polo is evolving unbelievably. It is changing by the minute. Nacho has done an incredible job at promoting it and bringing Ralph Lauren into the sport," says Nic.

His easy nature, good looks and polo talent have given him opportunities to play with princes and celebrities. His face graces polo posters around the town of Wellington and photos appear in numerous magazines, but his family helps to keep him grounded and he doesn't let it get to his head.

Nonetheless, reaching 10-goals remains his focus. "I am at the barn every morning and every afternoon. I spend all day. When there is the occasional photo shoot, I'll say I'll be free at this time. I never let it get into my polo schedule," says Nic. Though polo is his main focus right now, he is very family oriented. No matter where he is, Nic says the first thing he does every morning is speak to his parents. After reaching 10-goals Nic would like to focus on getting married and starting a family of his own. "I want to have a big family. I love kids," he says.

The older I get, the more I realize how hard it is to get to 10-goals," says Nic. "It doesn't come that easy. There are a couple of guys that are freaks, like Cambiaso. Others have the luck of being born in Argentina, and raised in big families with an unlimited supply of horses. I didn't have that luxury so I have to work harder at it, but I don't mind. It will all work out in the end."