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PBA event has top field

The PBA's $230,000 Tournament of Champions has had a face lift for its Dec. 12-15 renewal in Seattle and has attracted a field of top national, senior and regional players.

Among the 32-man field are Florida-based players Steve Hoskins, Ricky Ward, Jason Couch, Walter Ray Williams Jr., Norm Duke, Steve Wilson and Randy Pedersen. Parker Bohn III, Pete Weber and Mike Aulby are other recognizable names entered. Mark Roth, Dale Eagle and Bob Glass represent the PBA Senior tour.

The PBA established new criteria for entrants this year and included the 2000-01 champions. That was the season the PBA changed ownership and some events were not slated. The format will be entirely match-play with the rounds of 32, 16 and 8 contested with the best 3-of-5 games. ESPN will air the semifinals and finals live on Sunday, Dec. 15 at 1 p.m.

The winner earns $100,000, one of four large payoffs during the 2002-03 PBA season opening in October in Wichita, Kan.

Couch, of Clermont, won the 2000 TofC and earned $60,000, his largest career payoff. Hoskins, a 10-time winner from Tarpon Springs, qualified by winning the Lone Star Open in 2000. Ward won the Medford Open last season, Williams captured the Greater Cincinnati Classic two years ago and Duke won the MSN Open two seasons ago. Wilson captured the Flagship Open last season and Pedersen won the Indianapolis Open in 1999.

Roth, second on the all-time PBA win list with 36 behind the late Earl Anthony's 41, was a senior tour rookie, and Eagle and Glass are multiple senior tour winners.

PBA BOO-BOO: PBA president/CEO Steve Miller worked damage control last week to correct a fault in the new PBA player contract.

A sentence in the contract states: ... "Professional further agrees that he will not bowl in any non-PBA sanctioned pro-am or pro-am-like event without written permission from an authorized representative of the PBA, regardless of the mileage and/or distance requirements of Rule 10.11."

That sentence will be removed from any signed player contract and stricken from copies that players will be asked to sign in the next few months.

"We want to encourage our members to bowl as much as possible, while also asking them to remain concerned for outside groups who may try to infringe on the use of our logos and history for their own gain," Miller said. "When we realized that this clause did not serve that purpose, we immediately set about to rectify our position on the pro-am clause."

SENIOR RACE: With two events remaining on the PBA Senior tour, the race for player of the year is anybody's guess since there are no double champions. Glass, two-time reigning player of the year, has finished second three times and fifth once and is winless this season.

Bob Chamberlain has won one title and finished in the top five in two additional events. Steve Neff, of Homosassa Springs, Gene Stus and Ron Winger all have one win and have finished in the top five one additional time.

The tour is in Hammond, Ind., this week for the Lake County Open, and ends the season Aug. 24-28 at the Jackson, Mich., Open.

The women's tour resumes Sept. 15-19 with the Three Rivers Open in Pittsburgh.

-- Phil Gulick can be reached at xerxes8@msn.com.

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