PBA World Championship 2019 results

The week-long World Series of Bowling culminated on Thursday night with the season’s third major bowling event, the PBA World Championship. The starting field consisted of 135 bowlers, and after 30 games of qualifying on three different oil patterns and 16 games of match play, BJ Moore qualified fifth, Jakob Butturff (pronounced But-truff) qualified fourth, Bill O’Neil qualified third, Matt McNiel qualified second, and Jason Belmonte qualified as the tournament leader.

In the first match, the right-handed BJ Moore was taking on the left-hander Jakob Butturff. This match was over by the sixth frame,

PBA Chameleon Championship 2019 results

The PBA Chameleon Championship was the second tournament aired on TV in as many days, and after starting with 134 bowlers the field got narrowed-down to four: Andres Gomez, Jason Belmonte, A.J. Chapman, and Ronnie Russell. Just like the previous night’s Cheetah Championship, the four finalists bowled a single game at the start of the show to determine the ranking for the following stepladder finals. Unlike the Cheetah, the Chameleon has oil going longer down the lane (6 feet longer – 39 vs. 33 feet), which allowed the bowlers to throw the ball in the middle part of the lane. Overall, the scores were higher than the Cheetah pattern, but they still were not easy by any means.

Jason Belmonte, the most dominant bowler on the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association) Tour for the last seven years or so, got off to a red-hot start, throwing the first four strikes.

2019 PBA Cheetah Championship results

The first World Series of Bowling (WSOB) event of 2019 was the Cheetah Championship, held live at the Thunder Bowl bowling alley in Allen Park, MI. In a first, the seeding of the four finalists (Dick Allen, Rhino Page, Kyle Sherman, and Matt McNiel) was not determined prior to Monday’s live show. Instead, all four bowlers bowled a game, with the scores determining the seeding.

All of the bowlers struggled on the short Cheetah oil pattern.

Memorable Matches: Chris Barnes wins his first title

Chris Barnes has had an incredible professional bowling career, amassing 18 titles (3 of which are majors), winning both PBA Rookie of the Year (1998) and Player of the Year (2007-2008) honors, bowling a 300 game on TV (Geico Shark Open 2013), and being a consistent title contender week-in and week-out for more than a decade. The 1999 Eerie Flagship Open was Barnes’ second career TV show, and it was a high-energy finals that culminated in what would turn out to be the first of many championships for Barnes. Let’s go back in time to that memorable day now!

The crowd at the Eerie Civic Center was electric before the first ball was even thrown. This could be because there had been high scores all week, with bowlers averaging in the 230s and some even in the 240s, and the tournaments held in this venue in previous years had also yielded high scores. It could also be due to the fact that a basketball game which was airing on the same TV station that day went into double overtime, so the start of the bowling was delayed by a significant length of time. The first match featured Parker Bohn III going up against Rick Steelsmith. Bohn III was making his third consecutive TV finals appearance (and would eventually end up winning Player of the Year honors that year) and Steelsmith had incredible bowling talent but did not have a more accomplished career due to a shoulder injury he suffered earlier in his career. Bohn III had a lot of momentum going into the match, but after the first few frames it was apparent his ball reaction was not good. Bohn III, who was playing up the gutter, would go light on one shot and high on the next. He wasn’t missing by much, but he did not have much room to miss if he was to get a strike. Bohn III left a split early, which resulted in an open frame, and fell behind by a large number of pins when Steelsmith began the game with 3 straight strikes. Even though Steelsmith cooled off in the middle portion of the game, leaving 3 single pin spares that resulted in spares, Bohn III could not string enough strikes together to climb back into the match, or even make it close. When Steelsmith, who was playing a slight swing around the second arrow, threw 3 more strikes in a row the match was his. He defeated Bohn III by a score of 235 – 197.

Steelsmith now faced Chris Barnes who was making just his second TV finals appearance.

Memorable Matches: Duke vs. Hoskins

The championship match of the 1998 Greater Rochester Open came down to Norm Duke, the top seed, and Steve Hoskins, the #2 seed. Hoskins, a powerful cranker, had thrown a lot of strikes in the semi-final match against Tim Criss, shooting 224, and appeared to be locked-in. Hoskins was the defending champion of the event, and he actually bowled a 300 in the same bowling alley on the TV finals of another bowling event that year. So, during the 1998 Greater Rochester Open, whenever Hoskins started a game with a strike, there was electricity in the air with the possibility Hoskins would attain perfection in consecutive years. The crowd was going nuts whenever Hoskins threw the ball, especially so if he struck.

Dressed all in black, Hoskins started the final match with the first 3 strikes in a row and it seemed as though it was going to be his day,