Tommy Jones Top Qualifier at PBA Bear Open

One day after missing the stepladder finals of the PBA Wolf Open by four pins, 15-time Professional Bowlers Association Tour champion Tommy Jones of Simpsonville, SC, raced away with the top qualifying berth for the finals of the PBA Bear Open at Fire Lake Bowling Center Tuesday.

Jones, who hasn’t won a PBA Tour title on American soil since the 2008 GEICO Championship in West Babylon, NY, averaged 220.5 for 12 games on the most difficult of the Oklahoma’s Grand Casino Resort PBA Summer Swing lane conditioning patterns, a flat 40-foot condition that is almost identical to the U.S. Open lane oiling pattern. Jones finished with a 2,646 pinfall total to top No. 2 qualifier Bill O’Neill of Langhorne, PA, by 24 pins.

Also advancing to the Bear Open stepladder finals Saturday will be No. 3 Ronnie Russell of Marion, IN, with 2,620 pins; Rhino Page of Dad City, FL, with 2,608 pins and No. 5 Dick Allen of Columbia, SC, with a 2,606 total. The Bear Open finals will be contested at 2:30 p.m. CT on the special lane installation at the Grand Event Center. The finals will air on CBS Sports Network on Tuesday, June 10, at 7 p.m. ET.

Pacing the Bear field was a bit of redemption for Jones after Monday’s disappointment.

“It wasn’t the finish that bothered me as much as I threw a couple of shots into the gutter and missed the TV show by four pins,” he said. “Leaving those pins out there is what leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.”

Jones also is aware it’s been six years since he has won a title in the U.S. He has won three PBA International Tour events since then, but overcoming hip and neck injuries over the past five-or-so years has been frustrating.

“To win in the U.S. is definitely a goal, and to go in feeling healthy is a good thing,” he added. “Some of my problems have been bad bowling and some of it has been being overly cautious about my health issues. But so far this week, everything’s been good.”

The Bear Open is the second of five events that compose Oklahoma’s Grand Casino Resort PBA Summer Swing. All five events will be televised on CBS Sports Network on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. ET, beginning with the Wolf Open on June 3.

The Bear Open also was the second of three qualifying legs in determining the field of 18 who will advance to the round-robin match play segment of the Oklahoma Open. After 12 of 18 qualifying games, the top five were Dom Barrett, England, 2,744; Jones, 2,741; Mike Fagan, Ft. Worth, Texas, 2,737; Bill O'Neill, Langhorne, PA, 2,722, and Chris Barnes, Double Oak, Texas, 2,721. The first six games in Wednesday’s Badger Open will determine the Oklahoma Open match play finalists.

The Badger Open, which features a 52-foot lane conditioning pattern, gets

underway Wednesday when Squad A bowls six qualifying games at 8 a.m. followed by Squad B at 2 p.m. The top 18 after six games advance to an additional six-game qualifying round at 7:30 p.m. to determine the five Badger Open stepladder finalists.

PBA BEAR OPEN
FireLake Bowling Center, Shawnee, Okla., May 20

Final Qualifying Standings (after 12 games; top five advance to stepladder finals at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Grand Event Center in Shawnee)
1, Tommy Jones, Simpsonville, S.C., 2,646.
2, Bill O'Neill, Langhorne, Pa., 2,622.
3, Ronnie Russell, Marion, Ind., 2,620.
4, Rhino Page, Dade City, Fla., 2,608.
5, Dick Allen, Columbia, S.C., 2,606.
6, Dom Barrett, England, 2,553, $2,000.
7, Tom Smallwood, Saginaw, Mich., 2,551, $1,800.
8, Mike DeVaney, Winchester, Calif., 2,543, $1,600.
9, Dave Wodka, Henderson, Nev., 2,529, $1,400.
10, Jason Belmonte, Australia, 2,528, $1,300.
11, Tom Daugherty, Wesley Chapel, Fla., 2,527, $1,200.
12, Chris Loschetter, Avon, Ohio, 2,525, $1,100.
13, Shawn Maldonado, Houston, 2,487, $1,000.
14, D.J. Archer, Friendswood, Texas, 2,483, $900.
15, Nathan Bohr, Wichita, Kan., 2,469, $800.
16, Jason Sterner, Covington, Ga., 2,468, $700.
17, Kelly Kulick, Union, N.J., 2,456, $600.
18, John Ferraro, Kingston, N.Y., 2,420, $500.

O'Neill Leads PBA Badger Open Field in OK

Bill O’Neill of Langhorne, PA, charged out of 11th place Wednesday night to capture the top qualifying berth for Saturday’s finals in the Professional Bowlers Association’s Badger Open at FireLake Bowling Center in a battle that saw the top five players separated by only 18 pins, and defending champion Jake Peters eliminated from the stepladder finals by another three pins.

 

O’Neill, a four-time PBA Tour champion, averaged 230.33 to finish the 12-game Badger Open qualifying rounds with 2,764 pins, winning the top spot in the stepladder finals by two pins over PBA Hall of Famer and 37-time champion Pete Weber of St. Ann, MO, PBA rookie Marshall Kent of Yakima, WA, who joined the PBA the week before Oklahoma’s Grand Casino Resort PBA Summer Swing started, qualified third with a 2.761 total – one pin behind Weber. Two-handed player Brian Valenta of Lockport, Ill., qualified for his first PBA television show in fourth place with 2,750 pins, and 13-time PBA Tour winner Mika Koivuniemi, a Finnish native now living in Hartland, MI, fired a 257 final game to nip Peters for the fifth spot in the finals.

 

“If you don’t like matches being close and games coming down to final frame, you’re in the wrong business,” O’Neill said. “That’s why we do what we do. If you lead by 100 pins, when it’s over, it’s over; it’s kind of anticlimactic. When it’s tight like this was and you lead, there’s no better feeling.”

 

O’Neill, who has admittedly been in a funk over the past couple of years, said he

discovered a flaw in his game only a couple of weeks ago, and that was the difference here.

 

“On my fourth step in my delivery, I was drifting to the right instead of going straight,” he said, “so my arm swing was going off to the right which means the ball could go either direction. When I straightened out my fourth step, the ball fell right into place. Now if I throw a bad shot, I know exaxtly what to do to fix it.”

 

Earlier Wednesday, with a big first round in the Badger Open, Tom Daugherty of Wesley Chapel, FL, led the field of 18 players who qualified for the Oklahoma Open based on combined six-game rounds in the Wolf, Bear and Badger Opens. Three rounds of match play in the Oklahoma Open will be contested Thursday at 10 a.m., 2 and 6:30 p.m. at FireLake with the top five advancing to the stepladder finals Sunday at noon at the Grand Events Center.

 

After a total of 36 games, the 18 Oklahoma Open match play finalists will be reduced to the top five for the Oklahoma Open finals Sunday at noon at the Grand Event Center. In leading the Oklahoma Open field, Daugherty averaged 227.33 across the three “animal” lane conditions for a 4,092 total. O'Neill, who also qualified third for the Bear Open finals, is second with 4,088 pins followed by Mike Fagan, Ft. Worth, Texas, at 4,069; Bear Open qualifying leader Tommy Jones, Simpsonville, S.C., at 4,054, and Koivuniemi with 4,031 pins.Thursday’s Oklahoma Open match play rounds will be covered live on PBA’s  online bowling channel, Xtra Frame. To subscribe to Xtra Frame, visit pba.com and click on the Xtra Frame link. Live scoring of all preliminary rounds also will be available at no cost on pba.com.

 

PBA BADGER OPEN

FireLake Bowling Center, Shawnee, Okla., May 21

 

Final Qualifying Standings (after 12 games; top five advancee to stepladder finals Saturday at Grand Event Center)

1, Bill O'Neill, Langhorne, Pa., 2,764.
2, Pete Weber, St. Ann, Mo., 2,762.
3, Marshall Kent, Yakima, Wash., 2,761.
4, Brian Valenta, Lockport, Ill., 2,750.
5, Mika Koivuniemi, Hartland, Mich., 2,746.
6, Jake Peters, Henderson, Nev., 2,743, $2,000.
7, Stuart Williams, England, 2,730, $1,800.
8, Chris Loschetter, Avon, Ohio, 2,705, $1,600.
9, Anthony Lavery-Spahr, Pasadena, Texas, 2,703, $1,400.
10, Sean Rash, Montgomery, Ill., 2,666, $1,300.
11, Jason Belmonte, Australia, 2,647, $1,200.
12, Thomas Larsen, Denmark, 2,638, $1,100.
13, Mike Fagan, Ft. Worth, Texas, 2,623, $1,000.
14, Nathan Bohr, Wichita, Kan., 2,602, $900.
15, Lee Vanderhoef, Greenville, S.C., 2,601, $800.
16, Tom Daugherty, Wesley Chapel, Fla., 2,600, $700.
17, Dino Castillo, Carrollton, Texas, 2,555, $600.
18, Dave Wodka, Henderson, Nev., 2,521, $500.

 

PBA OKLAHOMA OPEN

(Top 18 after 18 games advance to round-robin match play Thursday at 10 a.m., 2 and 6:30 p.m.; top five after 36 games advance to stepladder finals Sunday at Grand Event Center)

1, Tom Daugherty, Wesley Chapel, Fla., 4,092.
2, Bill O'Neill, Langhorne, Pa., 4,088.
3, Mike Fagan, Ft. Worth, Texas, 4,069.
4, Tommy Jones, Simpsonville, S.C., 4,054.
5, Mika Koivuniemi, Hartland, Mich., 4,031.
6, Chris Loschetter, Avon, Ohio, 4,019.
7, Sean Rash, Montgomery, Ill., 4,013.
8, Jason Belmonte, Australia, 3,992.
9, Dave Wodka, Henderson, Nev., 3,987.
10 (tie), E.J. Tackett, Huntington, Ind., and Marshall Kent, Yakima, Wash., 3,977.
12 (tie), Anthony Lavery-Spahr, Pasadena, Texas, and Dom Barrett, England, 3,967.
14, Chris Barnes, Double Oak, Texas, 3,960.
15, Tom Smallwood, Saginaw, Mich., 3,959.
16, Ryan Shafer, Horseheads, N.Y., 3,941, $100.
17, Pete Weber, St. Ann, Mo., 3,938.
18, Thomas Larsen, Denmark, 3,931.