April 18, 2024 Nolan Hughes

Tournament leader Matt Russo, defending champion EJ Tackett headline nine-player stepladder finals

The marathon of the PBA World Series of Bowling XV has reached its final destination as PBA World Championship qualifying has completed at Thunderbowl Lanes in Allen Park, Mich.

Matt Russo led the field in the season’s fourth major championship with a blistering 14,198 (+2,718) total pinfall. He averaged over 239 for his 61 games — 15 on the 35-foot Cheetah pattern, 15 on the 42-foot Scorpion pattern, 15 on the 48-foot Shark pattern and 16 on the 43-foot Earl Anthony pattern.

Russo will be joined in Sunday’s championship round (noon ET on FOX) by Jesper Svensson, Graham Fach and defending champion EJ Tackett.

Justin Knowles qualified fifth to earn top seed for Saturday’s semifinal stepladder (7 p.m. ET on FS1), where the fifth through ninth qualifiers will compete for the final berth in Sunday's finals.

Knowles will await the winner of 19-year-old Eric Jones, Kyle Sherman, Packy Hanrahan and Michael Martell.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Russo led the left-handed-heavy field primarily using reactive equipment. He used urethane on the short Cheetah pattern and in Friday’s final round of match play — which he said was a safety move to hold onto the lead — and reactive equipment for the vast majority of the other 46 games.

“I just can’t believe how well I bowled the last week and a half,” Russo said. “I think it'll all set in when I bowl on Sunday. From missing the first cut, to winning a title and making another show, to now bowling for a major championship is phenomenal. 

“To me, this is a win already,” Russo added. “I've won a title this week and led the World Championship. I'm gonna bowl for a major. I can't control what anybody else does. The only thing I can do is bowl my best game on that pair that I’ve bowled on a decent amount and if the pins go my way, fantastic.”

Svensson, who qualified second, said he tried to stay present as he transitioned from fighting Russo for the top seed to staving off Fach, Tackett and Knowles for the second seed.

“I never felt there was anybody more deserving of the top seed than Matt. Throughout the week he bowled fantastic. I feel like second was the best I could get and I’m definitely happy with that,” Svensson said. “When I won my only major title (the 2016 PBA Tournament of Champions), I was the No. 2 seed so I’ve got good memories from that. I've lost a couple of majors from the one-seed, so I'll take the two-seed for now and see how that works out.”

Fach began the day in 16th place, sitting 236 pins behind third place. The Canadian southpaw shot 300 in the first game of match play and said “We’ve got nowhere to go but up. Why not climb high?”

“My arm swing was loose because there was nowhere to go but up. I just would not let myself believe than I was in 10th, eighth, sixth, third,” Fach said. “It still hasn’t sunk in yet. In my mind, I was still 16th and thinking I still had nothing to lose. Obviously that mentality worked, so I'm going to try and hold on to it for as long as I can.”

Tackett led qualifying in this event a year ago. He defeated Jason Belmonte in a thrilling title match to win the 2023 World Championship, the capstone to his dominant Player of the Year campaign. With a win on Sunday, following his Shark Championship victory on Thursday night, Tackett could skyrocket to the forefront of the 2024 Player of the Year conversation.

“This wasn’t one of those deals where I matched up. I bowled really well,” Tackett said. “I got nine a lot this week. These pins were hard to knock down. I just kept myself in it and that was pretty much all I did this whole week.”

 

In the 2023 U.S. Open, Knowles earned the No. 9 seed and climbed the ladder, losing to No. 5 seed Kyle Troup. On Saturday, in a bowling center about an hour from his home of Okemos, Knowles gets a chance at redemption.

“I got maybe too comfortable with all the wins, and I forgot to have that killer instinct,” Knowles said of his loss to Troup. “I felt, especially late in that match with Kyle, I got too easy with it, too lackadaisical. I wasn't hungry for it, wasn’t chasing it. I was just enjoying the moment. Now I feel like let's work on it. Let's chase it. I'm going to attack it with a different mindset.”

The 19-year-old Jones earned the No. 6 seed and will make his TV debut on the national tour, but his rise to the national tour spotlight has been years in the making.

As a non-member, Jones became the youngest player to win a PBA Regional Tour title at 15 in Oct. 2020. Five months later, he competed in the 2021 PBA Junior National Championship, falling to Landin Jordan in the televised finals. He finished fourth in the 2021 PBA Jonesboro Open (coincidentally Russo's first career title) in a non-televised stepladder.

Looking back on his PBA Jr. experience, Jones drew an interesting lesson: “Don’t bowl that good.”

“Every single shot I threw that show was on top of the others and it made the lanes so cliffed,” Jones said. “I need to be smarter in practice. I couldn’t have bowl better; it's probably the best game I've ever bowled. I’m confident with how I handle myself on TV. I just need to set the pair better for myself.”

The seventh-seeded Sherman finds himself in a similar position to Jason Belmonte in Tuesday’s Scorpion Championship as the lone right-hander in a stepladder. While Sherman did not cash, let alone make the cut, in any of the three animal pattern events, he performed consistently well all week.

  • Cheetah: 22nd place, five pins behind 21st and 45 pins behind 16th
  • Scorpion: 24th place, 22 pins behind 21st and 92 pins behind 16th
  • Shark: 23rd place, eight pins behind 21st and 36 pins behind 16th

The 30-year-old has battled numerous injuries over the years and spends 60-90 minutes before every round of competition warming up his body. He said his main focus this week was finishing qualifying and trying to keep his body in line as he battles injuries that get progressively worse as he bowls.

Injuries haven’t been the only reason Sherman only suited up for two PBA Tour events this season before the WSOB: Sherman said he and his girlfriend Amanda Greene welcomed their daughter, Mya, into the world seven weeks ago.

Sherman also said he received added motivation after the New Jersey KingPins dropped him from the PBA Elite League last month.

Hanrahan, who finished as the runner-up in the Scorpion Championship to Russo, will have to win seven consecutive matches to set up a rematch.

The final player on Saturday’s show, Martell, would have won the 2023 USBC Masters at Thunderbowl Lanes had it not been for the fire-breathing dragon known as Anthony Simonsen.

“This building has always given me what I like. We always joke about me moving to Detroit because I match up that well in this building,” Martell said. “It was calming to know I was in a setting that I had bowled well in before — and that was about the only calming thing about those last couple of games.”

After the first game of the second round of match play, Martell sat in fifth place. He then dropped to seventh, then eighth, then 11th. The one-handed southpaw hovered between 11th and ninth until the position round.

“I thought I was dead with a couple games to go,” Martell added. “I was not bowling well. I did not know what to expect. I kept looking at scores, which I usually don't do, and it got tighter and tighter and tighter. The last game, four of us were bowling for two spots.”

Martell found himself in a battle with Hanrahan, Belmonte and Keven Williams for the final two berths in the position round. Hanrahan shot 238 on the high end of Thunderbowl to lock himself onto the show, unbeknownst to the other three competitors on the low end.

Martell squeaked by Belmonte with a 208-204 win, but Williams had an opportunity to go around both players with a strike in his 10th frame. The two-handed lefty knocked over seven pins and came up four pins shy of Martell.

“I didn't believe it just because his ball reaction on that pair had been really, really good,” Martell said. “He missed a spare earlier in that game, so it shouldn't even come down to that if I'm being honest. He had thrown the previous three shots as perfectly as he could throw. I wasn't expecting him to throw it the way he did (in the 10th). All you need is a pulse, and I'm very grateful that he was the one to give me the lifeline.”

Martell will kick off Saturday’s semifinal stepladder against Hanrahan Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on FS1.

The player who emerges from that stepladder will advance to Sunday’s championship round, airing live at noon ET on FOX.

World Championship Standings

  1. Matt Russo, 14,198 (+2,718)
  2. Jesper Svensson, 14,664 (+2,464)
  3. Graham Fach, 14,603 (+2,403)
  4. EJ Tackett, 14,541 (+2,341)
  5. Justin Knowles, 14,472 (+2,272)
  6. Eric Jones, 14,445 (+2,245)
  7. Kyle Sherman, 14,392 (+2,192) 
  8. Packy Hanrahan, 14,219 (+2,019)
  9. Michael Martell, 14,195 (+1,995)
  10. Keven Williams, 14,191 (+1,991)
  11. Jason Belmonte, 14,172 (+1,972)
  12. Nate Purches, 14,071 (+1,871)
  13. Nicola Pongolini, 14,068 (+1,868)
  14. Deo Benard, 13,992 (+1,792)
  15. Zach Wilkins, 13,831 (+1,631)
  16. Mikey Schlabach, 13,677 (+1,477)

Full standings are available here.