The Magnificent 30 have ridden into East Lake, some a little trail weary, others far more toasted around the edges than the bent grass greens. Each begs a question that has plagued their kind forever:

How much golf is too much golf?

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Phil Mickelson (shown here at the PGA) has played 20 events this season, including 10 in the past 13 weeks.

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Sure, that's like asking how much lovin' is overkill, but evidently there is a limit to the number of consecutive weeks one can spend at the nation's top clubs and resorts.

The FedEx Cup, which crescendos at the Tour Championship this week, has placed upon the top pros the burden of back-to-back-to-back golf. For most of them anyway. Twenty-five in the field have played all three Cup events leading to East Lake. The other five – Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Scott Verplank and Padraig Harrington – have played two of the three.

Why, in a world where NASCAR drivers are on the track seemingly every weekend and NFL players risk life and limb with only one bye on the schedule, does the PGA Tour pro make news when he guts out a few weeks of wall-to-wall golf?

One obvious answer is because he can.

"That's what they have to do and they go do it," Adam Scott said about athletes on other stages. "We don't have to play every week. That's not how the tour is set up, and it shouldn't be set up that way."

It's not as if players have just begun cherry-picking events. OK, Woods has played in only 15 events this year, the fewest of any American player in the Tour Championship field. At the same age (31), Jack Nicklaus played in 18 events. That's the same number Nicklaus played at 37, Phil Mickelson's age. This year, Mickelson played 20.

Nobody who sits in Atlanta traffic day after day after day may want to hear of the grind of golf at this level. But put down that hammer and stand up from your cubicle, and listen anyway.

"It [playing constantly] is no problem if you've got teammates," Woods said Wednesday. "We're out there by ourselves.

"If M.J. [Michael Jordan] was having a bad day, he had [Scottie] Pippen. Who do we have? We have to find a way to get it done ourselves. And the more tired you get mentally, it starts showing up. You start making mistakes. You just can't afford to make mistakes out here; the margin is just too small."

"First of all, it's not the four in a row that's the problem," said Mickelson, who skipped last week's FedEx Cup event to groove his fathering skills. "For me it's 10 out of 13 weeks in a row [playing].

"That's half my schedule last year, in a three-month span. It puts stress on your family. It's very difficult to travel with three kids, but to go to 10 different cities in three months is challenging."

The scheduling has been one of the real sticking points of the new playoff format. Because of the points structure, players like Woods and Mickelson could miss a week and still remain viable for the big prize at the end. Their absences underscored the fundamental difficulty in introducing a team-sport concept like an extended "playoff" to the ultimate individual game. In the end, the two marquee players said they couldn't/wouldn't do it. They had to take a knee somewhere in between.

Hey, if the New York Yankees could, they would skip those inconvenient divisional playoffs and get straight to the American League Championship Series.

And next year, the FedEx Cup finish runs directly into the Ryder Cup, which will place even more stress on the top players.

It's not like there are 30 Lance Armstrongs out there, each one trained to turn golf into an endurance event.

"I'm wrecked, I'm destroyed," 47-year-old Mark Calcavecchia said. "Like someone else said, Tiger is tired after two weeks. How do you think I'm doing after eight [tournaments] out of nine [weeks]? He could run from here to downtown. I couldn't run out of a burning house. Yeah, I'm tired."

Woods is the best-conditioned player out there, and yet he takes more time off than anyone. That speaks to a stress that can't be worked off in the fitness trailer. That, and the fact Woods can make more than $9 million as a hit-and-miss player and leave plenty of time for taping his next commercial.

"If you play every week, you're not going to play very well every week," Scott said. "Tiger is the model of that. He comes out, gives 110 percent every week he's out here and his performance speaks for itself. I can guarantee he wouldn't perform the same if he played every week."

"Look, I mean, we play golf for a living," Mickelson said. "I'm not going to try to tell you that it's tough. ... But what's required to play your best golf is a balance, you have to be fresh mentally and physically."

Improbably, man was not meant to live on golf alone.