Playing well on a tight schedule

Hal Berman was heading to the locker room at Tam O'Shanter Club in Brookville. A few minutes earlier, he had been a quarterfinalist in the Long Island Amateur, a major championship for local golfers. In about an hour, after a quick shower and a drive to the office, he would be back to being an accountant.

Tom Trakoval reached the semifinals of the LI Amateur, happy that it was summer. He said that July and August are when he gets to work extensively on his game. For the other 10 months, he has a pretty full slate, running services for disabled people from the Manorville office of Independent Group Home Living.

Ed Gibstein played little tournament golf last year because he was starting a new Manhattan brokerage firm, Bannockburn Partners, LLC. This year, business is good enough to allow the partner to try qualifying for big events. And Tuesday, qualify he did -- twice.

Gibstein had a 7:38 a.m. tee time at Cherry Valley Club in Garden City and shot 2-under-par 70, tying for medalist honors in the Met Amateur qualifier. Then he had a 1:40 p.m. tee time at Tam O'Shanter for the qualifying round in the LI Amateur and shot 1-under 71, tied for the third-best score.

"It was a cross-county trip. Luckily, I didn't have to go from end to end," said the golfer who went on to win his first-round match in the LI Amateur on Wednesday and will tee it up in the Met Amateur at Piping Rock on Aug. 4.

"This is a lifelong passion for me," Gibstein said. "I'm 52, not 22. I don't play intramural softball or anything else like that anymore. This quenches my thirst for competition."

He and many others in the Long Island Amateur are a lesson to the rest of us who, at some point, have said, "I'd be better at golf if I just had time to play more."

You don't need all the time in the world, as long as you make good use of the time you do have.

Trakoval, who plays at Port Jefferson Country Club, exercises all year so he can play five rounds in three days, as he did this week. "To me, at 54, to get this far is unbelievable," he said.

"Basically, I play a weekend schedule these days. For a short period of time in the summer, I do get to play and practice a little bit. For low-handicap amateurs, that's all you need to get your game in reasonable shape," Trakoval said. "Nobody here is tour quality. For the amount of time I get to play, I get to be about as good as I'm going to be at this point in my life."

Berman, who plays at Middle Bay Country Club, said his bosses allow him a flexible work schedule in summer. Still, he is too busy to play a whole lot in midsummer. He offered this advice to any golfer who doesn't have loads of spare time: "When you do get a chance to get out there, really want it. Don't go through the motions. Get to the range early, hit some balls, think about what you're doing. And watch pros play, get a sense of course management, talk with better golfers. You don't have to play all the time to get better."

Tim Rosenhouse, like Gibstein, a member at Engineers Country Club, made the semifinals at the Amateur. As a senior at Lehigh, a competitive academic college, he has learned to balance golf and study. His advice to time-challenged golfers: "Just maximize the time you do have. If you have half an hour, take one idea and focus on that. Do everything with a purpose."

Gibstein, who has a 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, spends more time practicing than playing, which makes him savor every opportunity to compete -- even if it's against teens and early-20s golfers. He tells them that juggling golf, a job and a family is a challenge, and he adds, "You'll understand some day."