Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Kent has market on PBA Tour majors

By ERIC MUSKATEVC
Published April 1, 2007

Regardless of who won last Sunday's title match of the Denny's World Championship in Grand Rapids, Mich., history was going to be made. Doug Kent was the one inking his name in the record books.

Kent defeated Chris Barnes 237-216 last Sunday to become just the sixth bowler in PBA Tour history to win two majors in a season, adding his second career world championship title to his season-opening USBC Masters title. He also became the first to win a masters and another major in the same season.

The tour veteran overcame Barnes, who was looking to join rare company and become just the fifth to complete the PBA's triple crown Tournament of Champions, U.S. Open and World Championship. It was Kent, however, who came away victorious, striking with his first four shots in the title match and holding off a late charge from Barnes, who was within striking distance until leaving a 4-pin in the ninth frame.

With three majors and nine titles, Kent may have booked his ticket to the PBA Hall of Fame, though with the four-season exemption he earned Sunday, it may be a while until Kent is finished making history.

The final event and fourth major of the tour season is this week with the 32-bowler PBA Tournament of Champions in Windsor Locks, Conn., and Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. The event features the 29 most recent titlists from the tour along with the winners of the two majors from last season's PBA Senior Tour (Tom Baker won both) and PBA Regional Tour.

Barnes is the defending champ after winning his second career major in last season's Tournament of Champions.

Bowlers with milestones in reach are PBA Hall of Famers Pete Weber and Walter Ray Williams Jr. With a win, Weber would become the first to win each of the PBA's triple crown events twice. Williams needs the T of C to join Mike Aulby as the only bowlers to win the Super Slam (Masters, T of C, Touring Players Championship, U.S. Open, World Championship).

UPCOMING: The Dunedin Doubles will be back at Dunedin April 21 at 3 p.m. and will be open to all bowlers with a verifiable average. Details and entry forms can be found at dunedinlanes.com.

CHATTER: Time for an update, so bear with us. Scores from last week and two weeks ago are posted below. This week's honorees will accompany next week's. A while back at Seminole, Goodtimers secretary Steve Felsman had the focus and the roll for a 300/706 while captaining a 40-team ship that also included Leonard Schroeder who rolled a 300/777 two weeks ago and 769 last week.

Things got crazy at Liberty when 73-year-old Dave O'Brien tossed a 300 for a 703. Bob Willard couldn't get past 248, tripling it for a 744, Bob Smolka was perfect again for a 300/767, and to top it off Keith Glasgow bowled 298, 279 and 279 for a 856 total in the Callahan Bail Bonds Trio League - the best county score in months.

Tracy Ricci notched her first 700 by 15 pins with a 254/715 at Dunedin, where Rick Kroeger and Don Nelson won March's 100 & Over Doubles Tournament. Ten Pin's Tony Agostine and Jimmy Hadley both threw 300s for a 682 series and 795 series respectively.

On the web

Web blog

Have a question for one of our prep writers? Want to sound off in response to one of our county-by-county writers' blogs? Nominate Top Performers for the month? For this and more, check out our high school sports blog at http://blogs.tampabay.com/preps/.

Send Us Your Photos

Have a great photo from a game that you'd like to share with online readers? Take a picture or video with your camera phone or digital camera and e-mail it to preps@tampabay.com . Your subject line becomes the title of the photo and the body of your message becomes the caption. Files must be JPEGs and less than 700K in size. Photo galleries will be linked from high school sports page on tampabay.com.

[Last modified March 31, 2007, 20:32:58]