Trotta, 80, shoots a 78 and then makes an ace

The best way to honor George Trotta on his 80th birthday, his friend Al Inserra decided, was to hold a golf tournament at his beloved Bellport Country Club. Just as Inserra had predicted, it turned out to be a day awash in Trotta stories, trumped by the one Trotta composed on the course that day. He shot better than his age, a 78, and won the tournament.

Then, exactly one week later, Trotta and Inserra were playing in a team competition at Bellport when Trotta made a hole-in-one with a 9-iron on the short but perilous 137-yard 10th hole (the tee shot is over water, the green is multileveled and there are trees in the back).

"We decided that 2010 should be termed the Year of the Trotta," Inserra said.

Trotta said: "When you get to be 80, you confront the fact that you're not going to be around for too many more years. You take it as it comes. I enjoy the humor and the guys were really roasting me."

Many of those roasters had lost matches against the 13-handicap, whom his friends say acts and looks like a 60-year-old, having had two triple-bypass operations. In between his 78 and his ace, he won his division in the club's senior championship.

A former senior vice president for Met Life, Trotta has long had a game that traveled well. He has played at Augusta National and had his only previous hole-in-one on Governor's Island. He said that he is playing the best golf of his life now.

"I've become far more proficient with 80-yard shots and 20-yard shots," he said.

One of his greatest golf moments, though, had nothing to do with the score but the fact that 12 foursomes showed up at the tournament in his honor. "I just like the genuine exchange of warmth," he said. "That warmth of friendship, I found it so touching."