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Which president spent the most time playing golf while in office?
Executive summary
Counting which U.S. president “played the most golf while in office” depends on how you measure outings — rounds played, days spent at golf properties, or estimated rounds at White House courses — and the available reporting highlights different leaders depending on the metric. Historic accounts often name Woodrow Wilson or Dwight D. Eisenhower as top golfers by rounds, while modern trackers and news analyses focus on Donald Trump’s high number of visits to golf properties during his presidency [1] [2] [3].
1. Two different records: rounds played versus days at golf properties
Historical and contemporary sources use different yardsticks. Golf histories and specialized sites argue that early 20th-century presidents such as Woodrow Wilson or Dwight D. Eisenhower may hold the “rounds played” record — Eisenhower is commonly credited with playing roughly 800 rounds and Wilson is cited in some accounts as the most golf by a sitting president — because they kept up frequent, regular play often near the White House [1] [2]. By contrast, modern journalistic trackers count days spent at golf clubs or visits to golf properties, which captures travel and time away more than on-course activity; those trackers show recent presidents, notably Donald Trump, with very high counts of property visits [2] [3].
2. Donald Trump: high counts of property visits and contested round totals
Multiple modern trackers and news outlets document that President Donald Trump spent a large number of days at his own golf properties during his first term. Databases like TrumpGolfCount.com and related trackers are cited by Statista, Forbes, The Washington Post analyses, and others to estimate hundreds of daytime visits to golf clubs and hundreds of rounds (figures such as 285 daytime visits or about 261–285 rounds appear across reports) and to note that he was on Trump properties on roughly 428 of 1,461 days in his first term [2] [4] [3]. CNN and other outlets caution that visits to golf properties do not always equate to confirmed rounds played, because administrations sometimes do not disclose whether golf occurred during a visit, so exact round totals remain partially uncertain [5] [6].
3. Historical leaders: Eisenhower and Wilson as longstanding “golf chiefs”
Golf-focused histories emphasize that Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson are the traditional standards for presidential golf. Eisenhower is widely described as playing about 800 rounds, helped by the convenience of a White House course in his era; Wilson is named on some lists as holding records for “most golf” by a sitting president in earlier histories [2] [1]. These figures come from long-standing histories of presidential leisure and golf societies rather than from modern real-time trackers, and they reflect different contexts: earlier presidents had different travel patterns and media scrutiny, making direct comparisons to recent administrations imperfect [1].
4. Why comparisons are hard: definitions, disclosure and data gaps
Comparing presidents requires consistent definitions that most sources do not share. Trackers vary: some count any visit to a golf property, some only confirmed rounds, others estimate rounds when presidents are known to be present in golf attire [5] [7]. Media fact-checking outlets note that administrations may not confirm whether golf was played during a visit, making the numbers inherently estimative; Snopes and CNN highlight that different methodologies yield different totals and that figures like “most ever” can be misleading without context [8] [5]. Available reporting therefore shows competing claims rather than a single definitive answer.
5. Political framing and what the numbers are used to argue
Reports on presidential golf are not neutral in practice: opponents often use high golf counts to argue neglect of duties or misuse of taxpayer resources, while supporters frame golf as a legitimate rest or networking activity for a high-stress office [3] [1]. Coverage of Trump’s golf frequency has been used both to criticize perceived indulgence and to highlight differences in where a president works (i.e., at private clubs), prompting scrutiny of travel costs and security expenses cited in Forbes and other outlets [4]. Historical accounts of Eisenhower and Wilson tend to be framed more as cultural or leisure history than as pointed modern political criticism [2] [1].
6. Bottom line — what the sources support and what they don’t
If you define “most golf” by documented rounds across a presidency, historical accounts commonly point to Eisenhower (circa 800 rounds) or earlier presidents like Wilson as top figures [2] [1]. If you measure by days spent at golf properties or visits during modern presidencies, trackers and news analyses show Donald Trump with very high counts of visits and estimated rounds (figures like 428 days at Trump properties and ~261–285 estimated rounds) though those figures are estimates and not universally confirmed as played rounds [3] [2] [4]. Available sources do not provide a single, universally accepted ranking that reconciles these different measures [5] [8].