June 30, 2021 Jill Winters

Lubbock, Texas – Day two of qualifying at the PBA50 Cup, presented by South Plains Lanes & Lubbock Sports Authority, featured several back-and-forth changes at the top of the leaderboard.

Pete Weber held a 29-pin lead over Bob Learn Jr. heading into eight-game of match play round one. The two righties battled for the top spot. Learn jumped into the lead quickly after rolling a 247 to earn his first 30 bonus pins in game one, but Weber took the spot right back with scores of 247, 227, 223, 238 and 215.

Learn was able to win his final three head-to-head matches with scores of 238, 223 and 202 earning 90 valuable bonus pins to overtake Weber after posting a 6-2 match play record. Weber finished match play with a record of 3-5 for a combined total of 5,590, 24-pins behind Learn. The lower scoring pace was a change compared to day one.

“Pair-to-pair was much different than the first day,” Learn said. “During qualifying, it was a little easier because you had other players on your pair to get reads from but tonight it was anyone’s guess when we got started. It was really trying to navigate this house and get through the first couple of frames and figure out what each pair was doing.”

Learn wasn’t thrilled with the ball reaction he was seeing overall feeling like it was a struggle. He “juggled balls a little bit” going between three different options because he noticed the lanes were a little tighter to the right, yet the middles wanted to hook earlier. His first ball of choice was the Hammer Obsession Tour, which “I’ve had numerous opportunities to shoot 300 with this week.” Ultimately, he had what he needed in his hand to control the pocket and earned wins while also capitalizing on his solid spare shooting, despite missing one that cost him an additional 30 bonus pins.

The top-16 are back at South Plains Lanes starting at Noon Wednesday. They will bowl eight more games of match play before determining the top five who will advance to the stepladder finals, which begins at 6:30 p.m. Central. Watch the final qualifying round and the stepladder finals on FloBowling.com.

Top 10 at the 2021 PBA50 Cup:

  1. Bob Learn Jr. 5,434 total pins 6-2-0 180 bonus pins 5,614 total pins
  2. Pete Weber 5,500 total pins 3-5-0 90 bonus pins 5,590 total pins
  3. John Marsala 5,400 total pins 6-2-0 180 bonus pins 5,580 total pins
  4. Chris Barnes 5,396 total pins 5-3-0 150 bonus pins 5,546 total pins
  5. Steven Smith 5,363 total pins 6-2-0 180 bonus pins 5,543 total pins
  6. Amleto Monacelli 5,247 total pins 6-2-0 180 bonus pins 5,427 total pins
  7. Mitch Beasley 5,262 total pins 5-3-0 150 bonus pins 5,412 total pins
  8. Brian LeClair 5,244 total pins 4-4-0 120 bonus pins 5,364 total pins
  9. Brad Angelo 5,270 total pins 3-5-0 90 bonus pins 5,360 total pins
  10. Stoney Baker 5,154 total pins 4-4-0 120 bonus pins 5,274 total pins

Current standings for the 2021 PBA50 Cup: PBA.com/PBA50Cup