Huntington's Saladino loses at U.S. Mid-Amateur

Golf has taken Joe Saladino to all sorts of interesting places, including France, where he will travel for the third time next month for a team match. Yesterday, the game took him down the steep road of disappointment, but it also led him to believe that someday it might just take him to Augusta.

The Huntington resident played well enough in his morning match against Tim Mickelson at the U.S. Mid-Amateur to feel upset that he had let a chance slip away. He also played well enough Wednesday at Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton to believe he can eventually win one of these national championships and earn an invitation to the Masters.

"There isn't a lot to look back on and agonize over," he said after his 3-and-1 loss to the San Diego golfer whose brother, Phil, is the Masters champion. "I didn't give myself enough aggressive chances from the fairway, but that's golf. Some days you're the bug and some days you're the windshield."

And on any given day, Saladino, 30, can beat any fellow amateur. That is what he took out of his week at the Mid-Amateur, making it through stroke play and advancing through two matches before falling to Mickelson in the Round of 16.

To be sure, it was frustrating that Mickelson didn't give an inch, rarely making mistakes and forcing Saladino into needing birdies to win holes. "He played great. He had a solid stretch, especially six and seven," Saladino said. The problem, as he saw it, was that his drives weren't good enough to allow him to "get in the offensive mode" and go for flagsticks. He was only 1-down after a 30-foot birdie putt on the par-3 15th, then he pulled his tee shot on 16, made bogey and basically was done.

The half-empty glass says this event, within commuting range, was probably his best chance to win a U.S. Golf Association title. The half-full glass says he will have more chances. He's a half-full glass kind of guy. He's the son of Caroline Monti Saladino, who raises $1 million a year for cancer research through the Don Monti Foundation to honor her late brother.

"I realize right now, in any round, you're in the field, you're playing well and you could win any match," he said. "No one is doing anything that's night and day from what I'm doing out here. You look at the cards, at what people are shooting in the matches, and you realize your game is the same.

"It's just staying strong between the ears and minimizing the mistakes as you go. And I think that over time, the more you're out there, the easier it becomes - and the more you believe that you can win it," Saladino said. "I think that's a big part of it, believing that you can."

He still wants to win the Metropolitan Golf Association's Player of the Year Award and will enter the Nassau Invitational this weekend. Next Friday, he and his wife, Sarah, are off to Paris and Normandy for a biennial Ryder Cup-style match between the MGA and French amateurs. Then it's back home to work at his Manhattan fitness spa and insurance businesses. He also will reflect on what he could have done better.

One idea: He probably shouldn't have agreed with Mickelson to finish the second hole Tuesday night after play was officially suspended. Saladino was in the fairway, Mickelson was in the left rough, but rather than having to dwell on it overnight, Mickelson asked to keep playing. He made birdie, went 2-up and gained momentum.

But Mickelson was thrashed, 5 and 3, in an afternoon quarterfinal by Todd Burgan, a pharmacist from Knoxville, Tenn.

He planned to text his parents, who are at the Ryder Cup with Phil. Tim will be able to tell of a morning match against a Long Islander in which he didn't give an inch. "And in the afternoon," he said, "I gave feet."

Smith-Hogarth final. Defending champion Nathan Smith of Pittsburgh advanced to today's scheduled 36-hole final by defeating Todd Burgan of Knoxville, 5 and 3. He will play Tim Hogarth, who beat Sean Knapp, 2 and 1, in the other semifinal.