January 25, 2022 Jef Goodger

 

Graham Fach, Tommy Jones, Sean Rash, Arturo Quintero and Jason Belmonte compete for $100,000 and a major championship

 

Euless, Texas—The field for the 2022 PBA Players Championship presented by Snickers features four major champions among the five players who won their respective regions to earn a berth in the stepladder finals to air Saturday, January 29 at 8:30 p.m. ET. Graham Fach (East), Tommy Jones (South), Sean Rash (Midwest), Arturo Quintero (Southwest) and Jason Belmonte (West) will battle for the Guaranteed Rate PBA Tour season-opening major championship.

Fach, the top seed in the East Region, defeated Patrick Dombrowski to claim the East Region and advance to the finals. Fach won the 2016 PBA Players Championship as his lone PBA Tour title, which also made him the first Canadian-born player ever to win on the PBA Tour.

In the South Region, top seed Tommy Jones beat his fellow PBA Hall of Famer, Norm Duke, in the final match to get to the finals. Jones is a 20-time PBA Tour champion, including two majors, and is looking for his first Players Championship title.

Sean Rash won the Midwest Region to become the third top seed to qualify for the finals, but it was not without cost. Rash was fined an undisclosed amount, suspended for one PBA Tour event and put on one-year probation for a late-game incident in his win over runner-up and 2021 PBA Rookie of the Year Matthew Russo. Rash is a 17-time PBA Tour champion looking to win his third major title.

The Southwest Region was the first to be won by someone lower than the No. 1 seed, with second-seeded Arturo Quintero taking out No. 5 seed Kyle Sherman and then region leader Dom Barrett. Quintero is attempting to make his first PBA Tour title a major.

Jason Belmonte, making his return after 10 months away from PBA Tour competition, climbed the West Region stepladder and eliminated Cortez Schenck, Wesley Low Jr., Jake Peters and Jakob Butturff to move on. Belmonte is the all-time leader in major championships with 13 and could become the first player ever to win four different majors on three separate occasions. He has four USBC Masters titles, three World Championship titles, three Tournament of Champions titles and two Players Championship titles along with his lone U.S. Open win.

Prior to the stepladder finals, the five players will compete in a three-game, total-pinfall competition to determine seeding for the championship round. The players will be placed into the stepladder based on their three-game totals in the seeding round, which will be live streamed on the PBA Facebook page Friday, January 28 at 8 p.m. ET.

PBA Players Championship Winners Since 2011

2011 – Jason Belmonte
2012 – not held
2013 – Scott Norton
2014 – not held
2015 – Parker Bohn III
2016 – Graham Fach
2017 – Jason Belmonte
2018 – Tom Smallwood
2019 – Anthony Simonsen
2020 – Bill O’Neill
2021 – Kyle Troup

About the PBA

The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) is the world’s preeminent organization dedicated to the sport of bowling and its professional competition, with thousands of members and millions of fans throughout the world. The PBA plays host to bowling’s biggest tournaments from the PBA Tour, PBA Regional Tour, and PBA50 Tour. In 2020, the PBA launched PBA Jr., a club for elite youth bowlers under the age of 17 and the PBA Pinsiders, a membership for fans of the sport. For more information, please visit PBA.com.

For Press Inquiries

[email protected]