Coston surges to title

Jeff Coston’s long-running love affair with Indian Canyon Golf Course and the city of Spokane continued Sunday afternoon when the 53-year-old teaching pro out of Semiahmoo Golf and Country Club in Blaine, Wash., overcame a four-stroke second-round deficit to become the first three-time winner of the Rosauers Open golf tournament.

Coston, playing in the second-to-last threesome of the day, birdied three of the last four holes on the 6,255-yard, par-71 Canyon layout to post a final-round score of 14-under-par 199 and overtake second-round leader Ryan Benzel, who was playing in the threesome just behind him.

The win was worth $11,000 and prompted Coston to note that he’s taken quite a bit of money home with him from Spokane since the Rosauers was first played in 1988.

“The tournament, the golf course and Spokane have been good to me,” he said, after learning Benzel had failed to birdie the 449-yard par-5 18th hole and force a playoff. “This is just a fun place to play and a fun place to be.

“I enjoy the heat, enjoy the course, enjoy the people and just feel fortunate to be able to play tournament golf here.”

Coston’s road to a third Rosauer’s title was made a bit less taxing by the play of the 29-year-old Benzel, who struggled with his game throughout Sunday’s final round and showed few signs of the crisp ball striking that produced back-to-back rounds of 64 during the first two days of the tournament.

The former Ritzville High School and University of Idaho standout, who started the day with a three-stroke advantage over his nearest competitor and Sunday playing partner, Rob Gibbons, turned his drive on the first hole left into an unplayable lie, made a double-bogey six and let a whole bunch of players back into the tournament.

Despite his opening-hole foibles, Benzel still had a chance to save bogey. But he missed a 2 ½ foot putt that was about the same length as the short downhiller he missed for par on the difficult 438-yard, par-4 14th.

“I definitely didn’t have my best stuff going today,” admitted Benzel, who left himself with dreaded downhill putts on Indian Canyon’s severely sloped greens on far too many occasions. “But if I look back on my round, it was those two little missed putts at one and 14 that killed me.”

Still, Benzel had a great chance to win the tournament outright – or at least force a playoff – on the uphill par-5 closing hole, where he blasted his drive down the middle of the fairway and left himself within 170 yards of the back right pin placement.

But his second shot carried long into the deep rough behind the green, his touchy downhill chip landed in the long grass and failed to fully release, finishing 10 feet short of the hole, and his greasy birdie putt hit the right edge of the cup and lipped out.

“I was hoping (my approach shot) wasn’t that deep,” Benzel said, “because that’s not the spot where you want to be. I must have really had the adrenalin flowing. And my chip shot was just one big hop from releasing straight down to the hole.”

Coston’s start on Sunday was almost as unnerving as Benzel’s. After hitting it left off the tee on No. 1 and making bogey, he failed to birdie the easy par-5 second and went on to shoot even-par 35 on the front nine. But after making birdies at the par-3 11th and par-5 12th, he convinced himself that he could really become a major factor in the tournament by making birdies on the last four holes – which he almost did by posting two-putt birdies on both the short par-4 17th and par-5 closing hole.

Coston’s big finish was crucial, but he was even more proud of the way he responded to his opening-hole bogey and disappointing par-5 on the second, which he said felt like another bogey.

“Whether I won or not at the point really didn’t matter,” he said. “I just wanted to be committed over every shot from there on out. And something else kicked in, also, because I was, like, really tight. So I thought, ‘Man, I’m just going to relax my body, quit trying so hard and start carrying less,’ and it worked.

“If everybody did that, they’d probably all be better golfers.”

Benzel picked up $7,350 for his runner-up finish and Gibbons, the head professional at Arrowhead Golf Club in Molalla, Ore., and 1991 Rosauers champion, pocketed $5,250 after tying for third at 201 with Tacoma’s Derek Barron, who finished as low amateur.

Clarkston amateur Joel Dahmen was another shot back at 202.

Yet it was Coston who shoved his way into the spotlight once again, winning his third title just two years after claiming his second in 2006. And he admitted this two-year championship drought was much easier to accept than the nine-year span (1997-2006) between his first two titles.

“But I’d take another one nine years from now,” Coston said.

This year’s Rosauers Open raised another $115,000 for the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery.