TRUMP SAYS GOLF IS “PRIMARY FORM OF EXERCISE,” BUT IS IT EFFECTIVE?
President Donad Trump did something unusual last weekend. It wasn’t that he played golf on both days; he’s done that on 31 of the 78 weekends he’s been in office, by our count. It was that he admitted he was playing golf. Trump was in Scotland, and that trip, he said, would include a bit of golf, his “primary form of exercise.”
Trump usually masks how much he plays golf. Former press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Trump’s frequent trips to Trump Organization courses included meetings and phone calls.
On Friday Trump departed for his club in Bedminster, N.J., where it’s likely he’ll spend this weekend playing golf, too. If he plays both days, it will bring his total number of rounds to 107, by our estimate.
But is golf actually good exercise? If this is the main way in which the president gets exercise, is that anywhere close to enough?
Happily, there’s research that can inform the question.
Neil Wolkodoff is the medical program director at the Colorado Center for Health and Sports Science. Several years ago, he conducted a study in which he equipped golfers with a variety of gear to measure heart rates, breathing and other effects of the sport’s exertion. He explained his findings in a phone call with The Washington Post.
“It was pretty significant that we found that golf burns about 450 calories in nine holes if you play in a motor cart,” he said. “because you don’t think of it as burning a lot of calories, except that the act of swinging the club is a more significant contribution in terms of calories than we would think.” (By contrast, you burn about 650 if you carry your own clubs and walk.)
Another reason that playing with a golf cart burned more calories than you might think is because “what people forget is, most of the tee boxes and greens are elevated,” he said. “So even if you’re playing in a motor cart, you get out of the cart to go up to the tee box to hit or go up to the green to play your ball, you’re going up and down hills.”
Wolkodoff didn’t think that this was necessarily too little exercise. He figures that people should burn between 4,500 and 5,000 calories a week through both informal exercise — walking around at work, etc. — and intentional workouts of four to five hours a week.