Belmonte, Tackett Headline PBA World Championship Finals
The two greatest players in PBA World Series of Bowling (WSOB) history continued their brilliance in this year’s PBA WSOB XVI.
Jason Belmonte, who owns a PBA-record nine career WSOB titles, earned the top seed for the PBA World Championship finals.
EJ Tackett, who won his eighth career WSOB title on Wednesday night, secured the No. 2 seed.
Tackett and Belmonte have won a combined six of the last eight PBA World Championships, including the last two contested at the National Bowling Stadium in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Tim Foy Jr., Boog Krol and BJ Moore round out the top five for stepladder finals in the season’s second major championship.
The five players qualified for the championship round after 48 games across the WSOB’s four animal pattern championships, 16 games of advancer rounds and 16 games of round-robin match play. Full standings are available here.
The PBA World Championship finals will air live at 12 p.m. PT (3 p.m. ET) on FOX and the FOX Sports app. International viewers can watch via BowlTV.
Belmonte won the PBA Roth/Holman Doubles Championship with Bill O’Neill earlier this season, but will look to win his first singles title since the 2023 PBA Tournament of Champions, which was two years and three days prior to Saturday’s championship round.
This is the largest gap between singles titles since his first and second career titles in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
The gap coincides with Tackett’s rise to prominence over the past two-plus seasons. Belmonte spoke about how he has taken time to accept no longer being “the best player in the world.”
“For so long — I don't know how to say this without sounding a bit funny — that was probably my spot,” Belmonte said. “In the last couple of years, EJ has definitely taken that spot. That's the part where I think I've gotten my head around it. Before it was like, ‘Am I still number one? Can I still be number one? I think I'm still number one?’ Then the realization that I’m not — but I can get it back.”
Belmonte, however, has greater ambitions than that.
“I don't want to be the best in the world anymore. I want to be the best of all time,” Belmonte continued. “That's my motivation. That's my determination. That's why I leave my family (for the tour season).”
Belmonte’s success with the two-handed style, ranking seventh all time with 32 career PBA Tour titles, revolutionized the sport. A win on Saturday would extend his record of major championship victories to 16, having long surpassed the previous record of 10.
“I'm very capable of winning 20, and then I can stay in Australia and call it a day,” Belmonte said. “If I get to 20, I feel like that's the most ridiculous number that I could have ever imagined getting to. Whilst it seems a long way from now — I still have a PBA World Championship to win — that's my ultimate goal. That’s what I want to achieve in the next few years. The fact that I can lead a PBA World Championship at 41 should confirm what I've known I'm capable of to everyone else out here and at home: that I can still do this and do it at the very, very top of our game.”
Tackett has now made seven consecutive singles championship rounds. He also broke the PBA record for consecutive championship round appearances with six, as the PBA officially chronologizes championship rounds by the air date of the final round.
“It's one of those things where, as players, I don't know if we ever thought it could be broken,” Tackett said. “Six consecutive top-fives is pretty hard to come by. Any top five is hard to come by. To do it that many times in a row is pretty special. I know last year I was on the cusp and came up just short at the Masters. I felt like last year was, to me, more impressive because it was in five, almost six, different bowling centers.”
By making the PBA World Championship finals, Tackett became the first player since Sean Rash in 2011’s WSOB III at the to make the championship round of each WSOB event in a single season.
Coincidentally, the WSOB III, held at the South Point Bowling Center in Las Vegas, was the only other WSOB to include the Scorpion, Viper, Chameleon and Shark oil patterns.
“I bowled really, really well this whole World Series,” Tackett said. “I've always matched up pretty well here at the stadium. I was just able to take advantage of it and take advantage of some breaks and get on all the TV shows.”
As the two-time defending PBA World Champion, Tackett will look to achieve the sixth three-peat of a PBA major championship.
Earl Anthony twice won the PBA National Championship three consecutive years: 1973-75 and 1981-83. The PBA World Championship, as the tournament is now named, bears Anthony’s name on the trophy.
Jason Couch won the PBA Tournament of Champions in 1999, 2000 and 2002. No event was held in 2001.
Belmonte achieved the other two three-peats. He won the USBC Masters in 2013-2015, defeating Tackett in the 2014 title match, and the PBA World Championship in 2017, 2019 and 2020. (No event was held in 2018.)
Tackett defeated Belmonte in 2023’s epic PBA World Championship title match, then climbed the stepladder finals in 2024. The 32-year-old will have to slay Belmonte once again to win his third straight PBA World Championship title on Saturday.
Before this season, Foy had bowled on TV twice in his career. His first appearance came as an alternate in the PBA Players Championship East Region finals after Bill O’Neill withdrew with an illness and the second came in last season’s PBA Delaware Classic.
This season, Foy has made five of 11 championship rounds. This marks his first career championship round appearance in a major.
“Making the show in Delaware last year was awesome because I did it in front of home,” Foy, a Delaware native, said. “This will be my fifth show, and with this being a major, it's got to be the biggest one so far. You always dream of bowling for a major.”
Foy, a dominant PBA East Region player, has said in the past he felt like a minor leaguer playing in the majors. Despite his newfound, consistent success on the PBA Tour, he is not yet satisfied with his progress.
“I don't want to accept it, because I haven't won yet,” Foy said. “The fire's burning until I win. It’s going to light even more every week.”
Conversely, Krol, who also began his emergence on the PBA Tour in last season’s PBA Delaware Classic, has yet to lose a championship round match. He won both matches in Delaware, then went 4-0 en route to winning the PBA Playoffs last season.
Saturday will also mark his first career major championship round appearance.
“I’m not really sure what to feel,” Krol said. “That was the goal this year, just to make a major cut and major telecast. We did it, and it feels amazing, but nothing will beat Delaware. Nothing will beat the Playoffs. Last year was just something special.”
Krol made match play in three of four animal pattern championships in the WSOB, but failed to make a show in any event.
- Scorpion: Round of 8 loss to EJ Tackett
- Viper: Round of 8 loss to Jason Belmonte
- Chameleon: Round of 16 loss to Tun Hakim
“I got beat down so much this week at the World Series,” Krol said. “It beat me down so much where it's like ‘I’m making this TV show.’ All of the hate that I saw through the BowlTV chat fueled this fire in me and whenever I start feeling that, it's like I'm against the world. I just knew I had to make this show for myself.”
In the opening match of Saturday’s stepladder finals, Krol will face his tour roommate BJ Moore.
In the position round, Moore needed to strike twice and get nine pins on his fill ball to stave off Jesper Svensson for the No. 5 seed. He struck all three shots.
“I try not to let those moments consume me,” Moore said. “I still have to throw one shot; I just happen to have to throw three of them. I try not to ever overthink that, because I feel like you can really get lost in what's going on around you. I think that that becomes a little easier the more you get to that point, not that I've made a ton of TV shows, but I've at least experienced that before and I've experienced it both ways. I've missed a few shows, and I’ve bowled my way on to shows.”
Moore won the PBA Wilmington Open, a non-televised event, for his lone PBA Tour title. Climbing the stepladder to win a major in the National Bowling Stadium
“That's what we're out here for,” Moore said. “Titles are cool, but the majors are the ones that you're always after. To me, (a major title) is the pinnacle of it all.”
The PBA World Championship finals will air live at 12 p.m. PT (3 p.m. ET) on FOX and the FOX Sports app. International viewers can watch via BowlTV.
The full upcoming PBA television schedule is available here.
Final Qualifying Leaders | PBA World Championship
- Jason Belmonte, 19,045 (+3,045)
- EJ Tackett, 18,924 (+2,924)
- Tim Foy Jr., 18,803 (+2,803)
- Boog Krol, 18,633 (+2,633)
- BJ Moore, 18,621 (+2,621)
- Jesper Svensson, 18,619 (+2,619)
- Kyle Troup, 18,597 (+2,597)
- Chris Via,18,545 (+2,545)
- Mitch Hupé, 18,429 (+2,429)
- Matt Ogle, 18,378 (+2,378)
- Zach Wilkins, 18,335 (+2335)
- Andrew Anderson, 18,297 (+2,297)
- Thomas Larsen, 18,295 (+2,295)
- Ethan Fiore, 18,288 (+2,288)
- Darren Ong, 18,230 (+2,230)
- Lanndyn Carnate, 18,222 (+2,222)
Full standings are available here.
Tournament Schedule
National Bowling Stadium | Reno, NV
All times Pacific/local
Saturday, March 22
12 p.m. on FOX — PBA World Championship Finals
Free Tickets
More information on the PBA World Series of Bowling XVI is available here.