A CEO who spends too much time on the golf course is bad for the company. Sales suffer, profits suffer, and stockholders’ returns suffer.

That’s what researchers found when they compared the performance of several hundred top U.S. companies with their CEOs’ golfing data, as tracked by the U.S. Golf Association.

That’s also what a professor at New York University found when he looked at CEOs who used the company jet for frequent golf trips, and then observed how their companies fared.

Corporate honchos always like to claim that golf is “work,” because they get to network with other honchos and “do deals.” Or they claim they’ve earned the R&R and it helps them relax.

Whatever. Alas, it turns out it matters when the guy or gal who’s supposed to be minding the shop is goofing off on the 14th fairway all the time.

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The cost of excessive golfing by the CEO? Somewhere between one- and four percentage points a year in stockholders’ returns, the researchers found. To the uninitiated, that’s pretty big.

Admittedly, this research was conducted several years ago. But I bring it up now because my analysis reveals that at the current rate President Donald Trump is golfing about twice as much as Barack Obama did.

And Obama golfed a lot. Trump: Twice as much. Yikes.

This exclusive analysis was conducted using public data, a calendar, and some long division. Even Fox & Friends will be hard to call this “fake news,” though Sean Hannity might still try.

The inputs? So far, according to multiple reports, Trump has gone golfing 13 times since becoming president.

March 31 is Trump’s 71st day in office. That’s one round of golf every five-and-a-half days.

Meanwhile the magazine Golf Digest, in the kind of exhaustive and heroic work that really deserves some kind of prize, in January added up all the times Obama went golfing during his eight-year term as president.

The total: 306 times. The calendar tell us there were 2,922 days in Obama’s two terms. So that’s one round of golf every nine-and-a-half days.

In other words, Trump has been golfing at almost twice the rate as Obama did. And this in the supposedly busy early days of his presidency to boot.

Does this matter? Trump defenders will say not. They will point to the president’s many “successes” in his first couple of months. Like the big victory over “Moscow Mike” Flynn. Or that travel ban “win.” And of course, the sweeping triumph last week replacing ObamaCare .

That’s not all. Thanks to Trump, Hillary’s been locked up, the Mexicans are paying for the border wall, China and Japan have been punished as currency manipulators, the White House has established a sterling reputation for honesty and plain dealing, and absolutely nobody is talking about Russia.

Fore! Who’s to say Trump hasn’t earned some extra R&R? Maybe he’s just tired of winning so much of the time.

And, of course, Trump has a big international golf club business to promote as well. Don’t forget, the Trump family owns courses around the world. Membership is so expensive, you have to call to find out how much.

“ Trump can spend the day promoting his business and get the U.S. taxpayer to pick up the tab. ”

Every little bit helps. Presidential outings generate plenty of useful publicity. If Trump can spend the day promoting his business and get the U.S. taxpayer to pick up the tab, that’s a big win — for him.

I guess when White House press secretary Sean Spicer says the president is “on the green,” he really means it.

Obama was no slouch on the course. His golfing rate as president — 38 rounds a year — just breaks into the top 10% of CEOs, according to the 2014 study. That’s well up in the danger zone.

But Trump’s on another level entirely. Maybe it’s churlish to complain. But it seems ridiculous to ignore Trump’s golfing when he made such a big thing about Obama’s own, much lighter, schedule.

“@BarackObama played golf yesterday. Now he heads to a 10-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Nice work ethic,” Trump tweeted in 2011.

“Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter,” he tweeted in 2014.

Admittedly Obama was playing “black” golf, while Trump plays the much more respectable “white” golf. Black golf is so disreputable that until recently the best clubs didn’t even allow it.

But in total, citizen Trump bashed Obama about two dozen times for playing sport (golf or basketball) during his term in office.

Meanwhile arch-Trumpster Sean Hannity said in 2014 that Obama was golfing so much he was actually putting America at risk. Obama, the “Golfer-In-Chief,” was spending more time on the fairway than he was in intelligence briefings, Hannity said, and trying to “squeeze in a reading of his daily briefing in-between golf swings.” Really.

We await with interest Hannity’s even more fervent denunciation of Trump’s golfing schedule. We await, but we are not holding our breath.