Whew! This golf stuff is hard work

Jonathan Byrd shot a 7-under-par 64 Thursday and will carry a 1-shot lead into today's second round of the BMW Championship.

We'll assume he's going to play. You never know these days. Sports workloads seem to be optional.

Yes, that includes for sports writers. One used to cover the Bears and now it takes two. Baseball writers used to cover all 162 games and now get home weekends off. Columnists used to write five times a week and now papers are lucky to squeeze four out of us.

Pitchers threw 300-plus innings and now 200 are worth $12 million. Football players played both ways but now are specialists. Basketball players didn't raise their hand gasping for rest.

G-o-l-f always was a four-letter word and now w-o-r-k is.

Phil Mickelson isn't at Cog Hill for the golf tournament this week because playing four straight weeks would have exhausted him.

The format for something called the FedEx Cup -- that sounds to me like a deliveryman's jock strap -- asks the planet's best golfers to play four straight weeks with $10 million going to the champion.

Tiger Woods skipped the first tournament in New York, Ernie Els the second in Boston and Mickelson this one here. Somehow each can still win the FedEx Cup.

This is a little like the Red Sox saying "thanks but no thanks" to the first round of the playoffs and still having a chance to win the World Series.

The least that FedEx and tournament sponsors BMW, Barclays and Deutsche Bank should expect for raining money on the PGA Tour is for Woods, Els, Mickelson and the rest to sacrifice for the good of the whole.

Instead, those guys determined that being away from their families four straight weeks is too much of a sacrifice.

You know, as if it's all right for cross-country truckers, traveling salesmen and astronauts but too much of a burden for alleged athletes.

If the FedEx Cup isn't God's way of saying pro golfers have too much money, what could be?

"Mentally," said Steward Cink, who shot a first-round 66, "these guys out here, myself included, it's a struggle when you try to compete against the very, very best all the time."

Makes you wonder how nurses handle the mental pressure for a month straight and construction workers handle the physical strain.

When golf purses were smaller, many pros played whenever possible just to make a living.

Now most of the best players are in their 30s, so playing four, five, six, seven, 11 or 20 straight weeks shouldn't be all that much of a mental or physical strain … should it be?

"My mental shelf life is three weeks," said Justin Rose, who shot a first-round 65.

Where I play, men and women in the 80s -- that's age, not score -- populate the course. Some pull a cart for 18 holes. They're worn out at the end. They come back the next day. They come back the next week. And then they come back the next summer, God willing.

These folks pay to play instead of playing for $10 million.

Anyway, Byrd will attempt to build on his lead today. Sorry, though, somebody else will have to tell you how he did.

I'm too exhausted to work a second straight day and plan to play golf instead.