Excerpt:
There's a long and storied history of presidents and tennis. George H.W. Bush played regularly and aggressively. (One of the reasons cited for his throwing up on the Japanese prime minister in Tokyo in 1992 was exhaustion from a challenging doubles match earlier that day.) Jimmy Carter was such a micromanager that, according to James Fallows, his former staffer, Carter would "personally review all requests to use the White House tennis court." And tennis was such a big deal among the Kennedys that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara took lessons so that he could better compete with his colleagues.
Yet no administration was as linked to tennis as that of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt's wife, Edith, concerned that he was working too hard, had a grass court built outside his office that he could use for his daily recreation. And use it he did. He played on most days, for an astounding six sets over three hours, with little regard to the weather. If it rained, he would say that he "could get just as much exercise playing water tennis as water polo."
According to Michael Patrick Cullinane in "Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet," there was an additional purpose to all of Roosevelt's tennis playing.