Players Complain of FedEx Fatigue

The PGA Tour's best players are dog tired. They are at Chicago's Cog Hill this week for the BMW Championship feeling playoff pressure. They are running on fumes.

Do you feel their pain?

In a word: NO!

Golfers, despite all the sore backs, have never impressed anyone with their toughness. The game may have as rich a history as any sport played but rarely anywhere in its memoirs do you find Curt Schilling's bloody sock, or Willis Reed's emotional strength. (OK, Tiger at Torrey Pines in 2008. We'll give you that one, but who else?)

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When golfers hurt, they typically do not play well. When they are tired and run down, they go a lot of places -- "fore, right'' -- but rarely anywhere near the top of a leaderboard.

Which brings us to this week's FedEx Cup event, the third in the tour's season-ending playoff series.

Steve Stricker, Tiger Woods and Heath Slocum are one, two and three on the FedEx Cup standings. Stricker has played four of the last five weeks and both Woods and Slocum six of the last seven.

"It's a lot of golf for me,'' Woods said. "I normally don't play this much. And then I've been in contention most of the events. So that adds to maybe being a little bit more worn down, you've got to alter your practice."

Toss in the variables of the field coming off a Monday finish at Boston and a toughened, redesigned Cog Hill, and this weekend could be golf's answer to a NASCAR pile-up on the fourth curve.

"I'm tired. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep," Stricker, Monday's winner of the Deutsche Bank, said. "I haven't slept good because of the fact that I still can't believe I won, I guess.''

That's the double-edged knife. It's not golf that can wear a player out. It's good golf.

"The biggest draw on your physical resources is actually competing, and I competed at all four events, the last four I've played in," Padraig Harrington said. "As professionals, we can pretty much turn up and play a regular event, and if we're not winning the tournament or in contention, we're not stressed.

"But if you're in contention, you can't expect to have the mental and physical capabilities throughout a week in contention if you're going to do too much work elsewhere. You've got to admire the likes of Tiger, because I would be very surprised to ever see Tiger Woods play two events into a major again.''

Slocum, with only two previous PGA Tour wins in nine seasons before The Barclays, is getting a first-hand lesson.

Before the playoffs began with the season's top 125 points-getters, Slocum wasn't even sure he would make the field. Then, after finally claiming the 124th spot, he won The Barclays and flew into the No. 3 spot.

After the big win he missed last week's cut.

"From the mental aspect, just so into it,'' Slocum said. "I felt good, but you're grinding and grinding and grinding, and I just hit the wall hard.

"Yeah, I think definitely playing a lot of golf and then contending, yeah, it drained me pretty good."

Plenty of others are dragging, too.

Sergio Garcia, Lucas Glover and David Toms all have played six consecutive weeks. Kevin Na is seeing action in his eighth tournament in nine weeks. Scott Verplank, Jim Furyk, Justin Leonard, John Senden, Brian Gay and Nick Watney are among a sizable group that is six for seven.

Next week brings rest time before the Tour Championship tees on in Atlanta Sept. 24.

It can't get here soon enough.

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has heard the gasping this week.

A significant number of players are asking for the off week to be moved next year to the middle of the four-tournament FedEx series.

Finchem promised nothing.

"Every year we evaluate it after we get done and we take input,'' he said. "We've had the suggestion from a number of quarters, instead of going three off and one, going two off and two. We will continue to take another look at that.''

Keep an eye out for the pull-hooks this weekend, too.