FAIRLAWN — The two players who have won four of the Professional Bowlers Association’s five events this season top the leaderboard at its Tournament of Champions.
But both left AMF Riviera Lanes on Wednesday night with different emotions.
EJ Tackett, the 30-year-old Bluffton, Ind., right-hander who owns three PBA titles this season, remained on top of the leaderboard following the first round of match play with 6,112 total pinfall. The qualifying leader, who averaged 229.39 over his first 18 games, averaged 225 Wednesday night en route to a 6-2 record.
Standing just 54 pins behind is Las Vegas two-handed righty Anthony Simonsen, 26, who won his 11th career title in Wichita, Kan. Simonsen led the evening block with an unbeaten 8-0 record while averaging 239 to finish with 6,058.
The remainder of the top five includes England native Stu Williams, a 41-year-old right-hander now bowling out of Pflugerville, Texas, with 5,995; Dick Allen, a 44-year-old Chapin, S.C., right-hander, with 5,985; and Andrew Anderson, a 27-year-old Holly, Mich., right-hander, with 5,949.
Tackett’s assessment of his night performance in match play?
“I just have to be better. I bowled OK, but I left so many pins out there,” said Tackett, who lost his final match to Jason Sterner 214-213. “I felt like I left 100 pins out there. That last match was just the culmination of the night. It’s just frustrating.”
Tackett’s only other loss was 258-205 to Matt Ogle.
“You have so many games to bowl and you have to get all the pins you can all the time,” said Tackett, the 19-time PBA champion who finished off bowling’s Triple Crown earlier this season with his U.S. Open win. “You never know when that extra 30, 20 or 15 pins is going to matter in the end.
“We all do it, but it’s super frustrating, It was avoidable mistakes made by me and just bad breaks. I just felt like I was behind all night. I have to recognize what is going on out there quicker.”
Going through “several” balls on the night, Tackett was getting information from his ball company representatives, but …
“They’re not the ones throwing the ball out there,” Tackett said. “It was a combination of everything. I just have to do better.”
Simonsen, who admittedly started the final round of qualifying “a little shaky,” was able to right the ship and earn a match-play spot by finishing 16th.
“Some days, the body doesn’t want to cooperate with the mind,” Simonsen said. “I had to work through that the first three games this morning.
“But I was able to get into a little rhythm leading into match play. I drilled up four balls during the break and two of them did their job and filled the holes pretty nice.”
The two-hander isn’t sure if he has ever had an unbeaten mark in match play, which included games of 278 and 276 in the finale against Tim Gruendler to move him up to second.
“That’s pretty cool. There’s not really a better time to do it to make tomorrow a little less stressful,” Simonsen said. “I knew I haven’t been bowling bad. I was just trying to figure out how we could get back into the real swing of things.
“I just had to get to the part of the lane where I’m pretty comfortable and not just go through the motions. I had to feel myself out and figure out what was going to work and give myself a little extra miss room and capitalize on that.”
Williams categorized his first round of match play in three stages: really good, mediocre and then pretty good.
Williams, who averaged 221 during the night session with a 4-4 match-play record — worst among the top five — qualified second in the morning, just 34 pins behind Tackett.
“It started off really well for the first 25 frames. Then I had about 15 frames of disaster,” said Williams, who owns four PBA titles and was the first Great Britain bowler to compete full-time on the PBA Tour.
“I kind of changed ends at that point and regrouped. I didn’t have a very good picture of what I wanted to do, but I had a good score. Then I had two games where I threw it very well, but had a couple of mental errors that really didn’t help me. Just stupid stuff.”
One of those was an open 10th frame in his final match, a 214-189 loss to Kyle Troup.
“A double in the 10th would have been nice at that point rather than an open,” Williams said.
The 24-player field will return at 10 a.m. Thursday for the second round of match play, with all of then gunning for a spot in the top 17 at the end of the day to make one of four stepladder finals.
“I’m probably going to do the same thing as this block. Try to break down the pairs the best I can, try to get out to a good start and, hopefully, do better pair to pair,” Tackett said. “They were weird tonight.”
Simonsen plans to drill up another ball “to fill in one more gap … just in case.”
“You would rather prepare now then not be prepared tomorrow,” he added.
Williams needs to learn what his ball on the Don Johnson 40-foot fresh oil will do.
“I have to figure out the transition from the ball I drilled for the fresh to the other balls I’ve been using,” Williams said. “That muddied the picture a bit of what I needed to do.”
All are hoping for a clearer picture after eight more games during the morning session.
17, 12, 8 TO 4: There will be four cut lines after Thursday’s final eight-game match-play session. The first cut will be for Friday’s 6 p.m. stepladder opener with seeds 17 through 13 competing to move on to Saturday’s second stepladder. The winner will be in the field with seeds 12 through 9 to advance to the second Saturday session, set for 7 p.m. That winner advances to the round of seeds 8 through 5 to compete for a spot in Sunday’s championship finals at noon. Tickets are available at pba.com. The first three sessions will be broadcast on FS1 with the finals on FOX.
BIG GAMES: Troup joined Frank Snodgrass as the only players to shoot 300. Troup had his in a Game 5 win over Marshall Kent. He stands 17th overall. Snodgrass is 23rd after also making the cut.
For a complete list of scores, go to: