By my count, sixteen of the last nineteen United States presidents played golf. The question here is, why should this be interesting to Psychology Today readers?

For several good reasons, including therapeutic benefits that attend the sport, respite, recuperation, and release. And for moral lessons in fairness, companionship, and trust that the game teaches.

I’ll get to those. Meantime, a brief excursion through presidential highlights.

Presidential Golf

In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt, an enthusiastic sportsman, warned his designated successor, William Howard Taft, against golf because of (as we would put it now) its addictive qualities. After receiving “hundreds of letters” complaining about Taft’s enthusiasm, TR wrote the future President, “golf is fatal.” Undeterred, Taft, who tipped the scales at 320 lbs., countered with the beneficial effects of the sport, which included “good health and good manners.”

Woodrow Wilson, who defeated Taft in 1912, played many hundreds of rounds of golf during his presidency, more than any other, and, as it happened, none of them very well. He would tee off early and be back behind the Resolute Desk by 9 a.m. Warren Harding, who followed Wilson, loved golf but loved whiskey even more. (Harding keeled over after a month as president, the shortest term in history.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the eventual hero of the Great Depression and World War II, excelled at golf, winning championships in his early years. Felled by polio at age 39, his time on the links came to an end. Dwight D. Eisenhower carried an iron around the White House and had a putting green installed there as a distraction from Cold War cares. The “doomsday briefcase,” which held the launch codes for atomic........

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