{"id":13362,"date":"2026-06-09T16:02:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=13362"},"modified":"2026-06-09T16:02:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:02:03","slug":"from-tennis-to-t-ball-the-white-houses-south-lawn-is-no-stranger-to-sports-but-not-like-the-ufc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=13362","title":{"rendered":"From tennis to T-ball, the White House\u2019s South Lawn is no stranger to sports. But not like the UFC"},"content":{"rendered":"

By WILL WEISSERT<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Teddy Roosevelt boxed. Richard Nixon bowled.<\/p>\n

Dwight D. Eisenhower put in a putting green. George H.W. Bush added a horseshoe pit. Herbert Hoover played a game named for himself to get more exercise, while George W. Bush threw open the space for youth T-ball.<\/p>

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The White House and its storied South Lawn are no strangers to sporting events. But they\u2019ve never seen anything like the UFC bout President Donald Trump is hosting to celebrate his 80th birthday on Sunday or the eight-sided, wire-mesh cage complete with an open overhead dome featuring large screens that are surrounded by thousands of arena seats.<\/p>\n

Sometimes called America\u2019s backyard, the South Lawn was until now known for low-contact sports and joyful events geared toward children or bipartisanship, like the annual Easter Egg Roll or the congressional picnic.<\/p>\n

The same space being used for blood sport, feting a president who relishes it and playing out in a hulking structure featuring a complicated overhead lighting scheme known as The Claw, illustrates yet another of the White House norms that Trump is gleefully laying to rest \u2014 or, in UFC parlance, forcing to tap out.<\/p>\n

That the president has begun suggesting that he could make the cage-fighting venue a permanent South Lawn fixture further underscores just how far from T-ball the White House has come.<\/p>\n

\u201cSports has been central to presidents. I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s been quite the spectacle that it is with the Trump administration,\u201d said Michael Patrick Cullinane, senior historian at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.<\/p>

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Teddy Roosevelt pioneered sports at the White House<\/h4>\n

Many early presidents were talented athletes before taking office. Abraham Lincoln and William Howard Taft were celebrated young wrestlers. John Quincy Adams was fit enough to take daily naked swims in the Potomac River while in office.<\/p>\n

But Teddy Roosevelt was the first to make sports a large part of White House life, installing a tennis court on the lawn. His wife, Edith, was concerned about his workload, and the grass court outside his office was meant to force more relaxation.<\/p>\n

Cullinane, who is the author of \u201cTheodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet\u201d and is a history professor at Dickinson State University, said Roosevelt loved tennis and, though he didn\u2019t play well, he did so \u201clong and vigorously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roosevelt would take the court daily at 3 p.m., rain or shine, for seemingly endless six-game sets against top aides. He also boxed, holding bouts in the White House that were far more intimate affairs than Sunday\u2019s UFC fight. While sparring with his military aide Col. Daniel T. Moore in 1905, Roosevelt detached the retina of his left eye.<\/p>

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During a recent New York Post interview, Trump was asked about Roosevelt and replied that he \u201chad a lot of energy, loved the outdoors.\u201d He indicated that he knew about Roosevelt\u2019s having boxed at the White House but didn\u2019t comment on how the UFC event might compare.<\/p>\n

Other presidents brought more sports with them<\/h4>\n

Hoover used the lawn to play a combination of tennis and volleyball involving 6-pound medicine balls that White House physician Adm. Joel T. Boone was credited with inventing to improve his fitness. The game eventually became known as Hoover-ball.<\/p>\n

His successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had an indoor pool built for polio therapy. Harry S. Truman ordered an old horseshoe pit removed from the White House grounds, but the first President Bush reinstalled it in 1989.<\/p>\n

His son hosted T-ball on the South Lawn beginning in 2001 and presided over 20 games, with his last featuring Little Leaguers who were the children of active-duty military personnel.<\/p>\n

Eisenhower used the putting green outside the Oval Office frequently enough to leave golf-spike marks on the floors inside. Barack Obama had White House tennis facilities repainted as a basketball court, though they were converted back as part of a pavilion improvement project overseen by first lady Melania Trump during her husband\u2019s opening term.<\/p>

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