Want to know how to become a good enough golfer to compete on a national level? Ask Waynesburg's Robert Rohanna.

It takes monotonously practicing shot after shot after shot.

A typical spring or summer day for him involves striking more than 100 balls ... and that's just his warmup.

"I start off all my practice days with about 100 wedge shots," Rohanna, a 2004 Waynesburg Central High School graduate and Penn State golfing standout, said quite matter-of-factly.

See, Rohanna identified pitching as a weakness in his game in recent years. So he did something about it.

"I do a lot of practicing, just hitting a lot of balls," said Rohanna, whose father and uncles own and operate a public course in Waynesburg that bears his surname.

"I've only played in three or four tournaments this summer ... I'm on the range a lot and on the putting greens."

But Rohanna has made the most of the rare tournaments in which he does play. He finished third at the Frank B. Fuhrer Invitational last week, the highest-finishing amateur at the event, a field that included Sean Knapp, perhaps the district's most decorated amateur.

It says something about the level to which Rohanna has raised his game that his finish there disappointed him. Rohanna was the co-leader after one round at Valley Brook Country Club.

"I ended up not playing very well at all [on Wednesday, the final round of the three-day event]," Rohanna said. "I just couldn't get any momentum going."

The previous week, Rohanna advanced to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, falling to eventual champion Colt Knost, 2 up, in Illinois.

That was the highlight of the year for Rohanna, but it followed a college season in which he racked up the honors. He was an All-Big Ten and All-Mid-Atlantic honoree and was named an All-American scholar.

He won three tournaments, had seven top 10 finishes and was second in the Big Ten in scoring average at 72.40. He was fourth at the Big Ten championships and was pleased overall with his junior collegiate season.

"It was very successful," Rohanna said.

He was also named the winner of the Western Pennsylvania Golf Association's Frank Fuhrer III Award for the outstanding collegiate golfer from the area for the second consecutive year.

His high school career was just as decorated. Rohanna qualified for the PIAA championships all four years while at Waynesburg, finishing as high as second (after tying for first and losing a playoff) in 2002.

He twice finished in the top four of the WPIAL and three times led Waynesburg to the WPIAL Division II team finals. He was the medalist of that event in 2001, finishing third at the WPIAL individual championship that year.

A kinesiology major, Rohanna is looking toward a teaching career when he graduates next fall. That is, unless Rohanna's career continues its upward track and he finds he can compete regularly on the professional level.

"I'm definitely trying to get better every year," Rohanna said. "And then, that extra semester of school, I'll probably just use that year as another amateur year to see where I go with that, see if I can make anything of myself in the tour or just as an amateur.

"It just depends [on how I am playing] when I get there."

A four-year starter on the Waynesburg basketball team, he uses his 6-foot-2 frame to hit long off the tee. He was introduced to the game when he was 4 years old and "I liked it as soon as I started," he said.

Due in large part to all the work he put in on it, Rohanna has been able to add adept chipping to his long drives off the tee as strengths to his game.

But he also has a good idea what his weaknesses are. If the past is any indication, it's certain they won't be Rohanna's weaknesses for long.

"I just want to be more consistent with everything," he said. "I'm a streaky putter, I'm an OK putter, pretty good at putting most of the time.

"I just want to improve a lot on straightness. Even if I lose some distance, I just want to improve accuracy. I've just got to keep practicing and working on my swing."

By the hundreds, every day.