Ben Polland avenges an 18th-hole disaster nine years earlier with a three-stoke victory in the PGA Professional Championship

Ben Polland entered the PGA Professional Championship with an impressive club pro resume that includes a stint at Deepdale Golf Club in Manhasset, N.Y., and his current job as director of golf at Shooting Star Jackson Hole in Wyoming, that also contained a disturbing blemish that he erased on Wednesday.

Polland, 33, won the club pro championship by three strokes at PGA Frisco’s Fields Ranch East Course in Frisco, Texas, to earn a fourth start in the PGA Championship, next month at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville.

Nine years earlier, Polland double-bogeyed the 72nd hole of the club pro championship to lose to Matt Dobyns by a stroke. This time around, he built a 54-hole lead that gave him enough of a cushion that in spite of a four-over 76 in the final round still enabled him to win by three.

“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve thought about this tournament for a long time. It’s meant a lot, especially with what happened in the first time playing it. I always knew that if I kept working hard that I’d have a chance. I can’t believe it’s done.

“I’ve had a lot of people asking me about that tournament. I don’t think I’d be the golfer or person I am without that. I got a lot of support after that happened. And just worked a lot harder and it lit a fire underneath me. Matt Dobyns when he won that, when we were shaking hands on the 18th green, he told me that I was going to win it one day.”

Polland completed 72 holes in two-under par 286. His lead at one point on Wednesday fell to a single stroke after a bogey at four and a double at five, and back-to-back bogeys at 11 and 12 briefly made it interesting, but a birdie at 14 enabled to regain control of the championship. Andy Svoboda and Jared Jones tied for second.

“Just sticking to the game plan,” he said regarding how he prevailed in spite of the missteps. “I knew it was going to play really tough especially during the practice rounds and the wind.”

Shooting Star Jackson Hole is 98th on Golf Digest’s ranking of America’s Greatest Golf Courses, and it now can lay claim to having the best PGA professional player on its staff.

Michael Block, meanwhile, shot a final-round 78 and tied for 39th, though he already earned a start in the PGA Championship via his tie for 15th at last year’s PGA at Oak Hill.

Stephanie Connelly-Eiswerth finished bogey, bogey, double-bogey to drop to a tie for 26th, though even had she finished in the top 20, she would not have received an exemption into the PGA Championship because she playing forward tees.

Finally, Tracy Phillips, 61, from Cedar Ridge Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., tied for eighth to earn his first start in the PGA Championship.