By NOLAN HUGHES
PBA Communications
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Eight of the PBA’s best descend upon Steel City Bowl & Brews in Bethlehem, Pa. this weekend for the PBA Tour Finals.
The title event features nine hours of live coverage on CBS Sports Network across June 8 and 9.
The field is composed of the top eight players in competition points earned during the 2023 and 2024 PBA Tour regular seasons.
EJ Tackett, who led the tour in points both seasons, enters the event as the top seed. Anthony Simonsen, Jason Belmonte, Bill O’Neill, Marshall Kent, defending champion Kyle Troup, Packy Hanrahan and Jakob Butturff round out the field.
O’Neill and Kent are the lone participants who did not qualify for the 2023 event, supplanting Dom Barrett and Kris Prather.
First place will award $30,000. Tickets to attend the PBA Tour Finals have sold out.
Tackett, Simonsen and Belmonte have qualified for all eight iterations of the PBA Tour Finals dating back to 2017. (Belmonte did not compete in the 2020 event due to pandemic-related travel issues.)
Those three players have combined to win five of the seven PBA Tour Finals titles. Troup won the other two events, including last year’s Hall-of-Fame-eligibility-clinching victory.
FORMAT
Players will be split into two groups based on their point totals over the past two seasons. Group 1 includes top-seeded Tackett, O’Neill, Kent and Butturff. Simonsen, Belmonte, Troup and Hanrahan will compete in Group 2.
For Saturday’s positioning rounds, all four players will bowl two games on the dual patterns (46-foot Petraglia on the left lane; 38-foot Holman on the right lane).
After two games, the third and fourth qualifiers will earn the No. 3 and No. 4 seed for Sunday’s group stepladder; the top two qualifiers will bowl an additional game (pinfall does not carry over) to determine which player earns the top seed for Sunday’s group stepladder.
Group 1 and Group 2 will compete Saturday at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., respectively, on CBS Sports Network.
On Sunday, the first two matches of each group stepladder will be a single game. Each final match, as well as the championship, will be a Race-to-Two match with a ninth and 10th frame roll-off as a tiebreaker.
Advancers from each group stepladder will meet in the championship, taking place at 6 p.m. immediately following the Group 1 stepladder (2 p.m.) and Group 2 stepladder (4 p.m.).
PBA Tour Finals Competitors
Stats based on 2023 and 2024 regular PBA Tour seasons
NO. 1 EJ TACKETT
71,120 points, $703,450 in earnings, 7 titles, 19 top-five finishes, 23 top-10 finishes
If Tackett did not bowl a 2024 event, he would’ve qualified as the No. 3 seed; if he finished last in every 2024 event, he would’ve earned enough points to be the No. 2 seed before the end of the World Series of Bowling.
But Tackett did not rest on his laurels: He led the tour in points and earnings; he is on pace to set the single-season average record; he made five consecutive shows to tie a PBA Tour record and came one place shy of a sixth straight at the USBC Masters; he will earn a 12th top-10 in the Tour Finals to match his 2023 total.
With four players tied with two titles — Tackett, Kent, Troup and David Krol — a third title would be monumental in the Player of the Year race.
NO. 2 ANTHONY SIMONSEN
58,295 points, $529,850 in earnings, 4 titles, 18 top-five finishes, 23 top-10 finishes
In one season, Simonsen led two major championships, climbed a stepladder to win a title, and bowled conventional and back-up in a single game. That’s the singular standard the 27-year-old has set.
Simonsen may trail Tackett by a decent margin in points, earnings and titles, but the underlying statistics show the enormous gap between those two players and the rest of the tour over the past two seasons.
NO. 3 JASON BELMONTE
41,995 points, $467,125 in earnings, 1 title, 8 top-five finishes, 16 top-10 finishes
Belmonte finished lower than 11th just twice in his 13 events this season; his median finish of eighth trails only Tackett this season.
Though he has not won yet this season, a refreshed Belmonte is one to be reckoned with. Upon his return to the U.S. after a brief visit home to Australia during the midseason break, he nearly took home the Masters title and then earned a runner-up finish with O’Neill in the Roth/Holman Doubles Championship.
NO. 4 BILL O’NEILL
34,850 points, $255,445 in earnings, 1 title, 7 top-five finishes, 11 top-10 finishes
O’Neill closed the 2023 campaign with six straight top-20 performances — a product of an assertive return to 15-pound equipment — and never looked back. He finished top-20 eight more times this season, a 70% clip during that stretch.
Following his semifinal loss in the PBA Playoffs, O’Neill said he planned to reevaluate his performances on television and determine if any wholesale changes need to be made. Perhaps the short 1.5-hour commute to the Tour Finals from his home in Langhorne, Pa. will be the solution.
NO. 5 MARSHALL KENT
34,617.50 points, $242,900 in earnings, 2 titles, 4 top-five finishes, 10 top-10 finishes
Much like O’Neill, Kent performed solid-but-unspectacular in 2023 before making The Leap in 2024. Kent recommitted himself to the game in the offseason and the results speak for themselves: He earned two titles, including his first career major, and finished second in points.
NO. 6 KYLE TROUP
32,172.50 points, $319,850 in earnings, 3 titles, 8 top-five finishes, 8 top-10 finishes
Few players elevate their game in the postseason more so than Troup, who is the only player to win both the PBA Tour Finals and Playoffs. With two titles this year, including a U.S. Open crown, Troup has his eyes on a third title and a leg up in the Player of the Year race.
NO. 7 PACKY HANRAHAN
26,585 points, $177,120 in earnings, 2 titles, 11 top-five finishes, 11 top-10 finishes
Hanrahan couldn’t quite match his superb 2023 campaign, in which he won two titles, but the lanky lefty did earn four top-10 finishes this season. Hanrahan finished top 10 twice in major championships, while also notching a runner-up finish in the PBA Scorpion Championship.
NO. 8 JAKOB BUTTURFF
26,495 points, $197,975 in earnings, 1 title, 10 top-five finishes, 10 top-10 finishes
Butturff rode the struggle bus in 2024, tallying just one top-10 finish, which only makes the brilliance of his 2023 campaign more impressive. As the lone southpaw in Group 1, Butturff has an excellent opportunity to make up for a disappointing season — just like last year’s No. 8 seed, Troup.
2024 PBA TOUR FINALS TV SCHEDULE
All times are listed in Eastern
Saturday, June 8 | CBS Sports Network
3 p.m. — Group 1 Positioning Round
5 p.m. — Group 2 Positioning Round
Sunday, June 9 | CBS Sports Network
2 p.m. — Group 1 Stepladder finals
4 p.m. — Group 2 Stepladder finals
6 p.m. — Championship
Past PBA Tour Finals Winners
2017 — EJ Tackett
2018 — Jason Belmonte
2019 — EJ Tackett
2020 — Kyle Troup
2021 — Anthony Simonsen
2022 — Jason Belmonte
2023 — Kyle Troup