Steinberg Extends Dubious Tradition : Vanquished: Van Nuys optometrist again comes close but fails to advance to final.

Dr. Craig Steinberg has a blossoming optometry practice. In his spare time he has studied his way through three years of law school. Once in a while, perhaps for three or four hours a week, he finds an escape from his brutal schedule to play a little golf.

And then, every year about this time, he plays a lot of golf.

Steinberg, 34, of Van Nuys, has visited the rugged and breathtaking shoreline of the Pebble Beach Golf Links, annual site of the California Amateur golf championship, more times than most seals.

They, however, usually come away with a fish.

Steinberg comes away with nothing.

Thirteen times he has qualified for the tournament. Eleven times he has made it through a grueling 36 holes of stroke play to qualify for match play. And seven times he has advanced as far as the quarterfinals.

Twice he has made it to the semifinals.

The most recent time was Thursday.

“Part of me wants to be happy, to remember that I made it this far and so many other great golfers didn’t,” Steinberg said. “But mostly, it hurts. It hurts to lose and it hurts most of all to lose after getting so close.

“Thirteen times, and I haven’t made it to the championship match. Thirteen times and I haven’t given myself the chance to win it.’

Steinberg has won dozens of amateur tournaments, including last year’s Southern California Golf Assn. amateur championship. But never this one. Never the big one.

The loss Thursday came to Dave Berganio Jr. of Sylmar, the U.S. Public Links and Pacific Coast Amateur champion, a terrific 23-year-old senior at the University of Arizona who has the PGA tour in his sights and who plays more golf in a month than Steinberg does in a year.

No consolation.

“Losing is losing,” Steinberg said. “I never liked it. I never will.”

Berganio spotted Steinberg a two-hole advantage in the match-play semifinal and then turned in several brilliant shots to overhaul him.

And so, Berganio goes into today’s championship match.

And Steinberg makes the scenic but lonely drive south on the Pacific Coast Highway.

The semifinal match was even heading to the 17th hole. Berganio’s tremendous shot from the sand on the famed hole saved a par, and then Steinberg’s short chip from the savage rough that surrounds the green caught perhaps the final inch of that rough at the edge of the green and trickled sideways, 20 feet from the hole.

The bogey gave Berganio a one-hole lead, and he held on, despite hitting his second shot on the 18th hole nearly into the ocean.

Steinberg, given one last glimmer of hope as the fog began to sweep over the course, launched his approach to the 18th green. It soared high and straight.

And then it hit the very end of an outstretched limb of a lone cypress tree in the fairway and dropped straight down.

The 13-year quest would have to wait one more year.

“It was my fault,” he said of the final, unfortunate shot. “But it seems as though it’s always something like that. A branch. The last tiny piece of rough grabbing my chip at the green.”

He will try to defend his SCGA amateur title in two weeks and then dive back into his hectic life of optometry and law.

With the semifinal appearance in the state amateur championship, however, he assured himself of an invitation to the 1993 tournament.

And as sure as there will be sea otters and kelp in the area next year, there too will be Steinberg.

“I’ll keep trying until I win it,” he said. “Every year it gets harder to practice golf, harder to play, harder to find any time, but I’ll keep trying.

“I often wonder if I had the time to play every day, to practice a lot, would it make the difference? I don’t know.

“I’ll probably never know the answer to that question. Because of my businesses, because of my priorities, my family, I can never find out. I am an amateur. I do the best I can with what I have.”