Pro bowling lost its way in Milwaukee for a while, but the reunion sure feels right

WAUWATOSA – A few hundred hardcore fans pack the bleachers. TV lights illuminate two 60-foot lanes and their approach.

There’s money on the line. Enough money that a player can make a comfortable living if he wins a couple of these tournaments and contends in a few more.

This all seems familiar.

But then between the crash of bowling pins, a deejay spins an eclectic mix of snippets, among them “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Party in the USA,” “Cotton Eye Joe,” “Cha Cha Slide” and, because we’re in Wisconsin, “The Bears Still Suck.”

No, this isn’t exactly your father’s Milwaukee stop on the PBA Tour.

But just because you lost track somewhere around the time of Earl Anthony, that doesn’t mean the pro game has disappeared or that Milwaukee isn’t an important part of its past or present.

It’s just less noticeable than a generation ago when the likes of Anthony and Mark Roth and Marshall Holman competed for titles in the Miller High Life Open and the Lite Beer Championship at the long-since razed Red Carpet Celebrity Lanes on S. 27^th Street.

Milwaukee was a PBA Tour staple from 1966 to 1990

“The PBA would have one event a year here, one show, and it was a big crowd and it was one of the best places to go on Tour,” PBA commissioner Tom Clark was saying this week before a live television broadcast from the World Series of Bowling at Bowlero Wauwatosa. “Bowling and Milwaukee went together.”

For decades.

And then not so much.

After an uninterrupted run from 1966 to 1990, the PBA Tour came just one time before last year to the city once known as the bowling capital of the United States.

Around the same time, thousands of centers nationwide were closing as league bowling dropped off precipitously. An expanding cable landscape and changing priorities cut into an audience of 15 million for weekly coverage of the pro tour. ABC television went away. Event sponsors followed. The PBA changed hands.

Closer to home WTMJ-TV’s “Bowling with the Champs” ended its 41-season run in 1995, and the United States Bowling Congress left its Greendale home for Arlington, Texas, in 2008.

Then last year, the PBA brought its World Series of Bowling – a major event – to a center owned by Bowlero, the largest operator of bowling centers as well as the owner of the tour.

The World Series at Bowlero Wauwatosa includes three tournaments that build toward Sunday's main event

The two-week-long World Series includes three individual tournaments on different oil patterns (called the Cheetah, Scorpion and Shark championships), a USA vs. World team competition and culminates with the PBA World Championship on Sunday with live television coverage on Fox.

“We do six live television shows (mostly on FS1) during the World Series of Bowling,” Clark said. “So you’ve got to fill the crowd six different times, which is different than ever in the history of the game. So we know we’re going to sell out in Milwaukee every time. There won’t be any seats left in this crowd, and that’s for all six shows. That’s because of the bowling fans that are in Milwaukee.”

Hazy memories of the old tournaments across town may linger for people of a certain age.

In reality, the crowd was only a little bigger in the bowling heyday than it is today, Clark said, and there were relatively few prime seats behind the competitors while most fans were back on the concourse with limited view of the action.

Today spectators sit in lane-side bleachers, bathed in blue light for a pleasing TV background. Afterward, as always, they line up 20 deep for an autograph or a photo with the champ.

Pete Weber and Marshall Holman gave way to the likes of Jason Belmonte and EJ Tackett

Fields now are younger and more international than those of three decades ago, and another notable change is that a number of players roll two-handed.

Many of the most familiar household names went away during the time the PBA forgot Milwaukee, but that happens over time in any sport, the way Jack and Arnie did in golf and Mario and A.J. in the Indianapolis 500.

“Who do you remember from back then? Mark Roth. Earl Anthony,” Clark said. “That’s Jason Belmonte now. That’s EJ Tackett … he’s like the Marshall Holman of today, the Pete Weber of today.

“So it’s generational, and this next generation has just as many big stars as those days. Everybody wanted to watch the big stars. But then there’s plenty of people to fill out these fields and make it harder. There’s always a surprise.”

Tackett, a 30-year-old from Bluffton, Indiana, won the Cheetah Championship on Monday night and finished second to Jakob Butturff on Tuesday in the Scorpion Championship. The son of bowling center proprietors who turned pro after giving up a college golf scholarship, Tackett made his first televised finals on the same pair of lanes 10 years earlier, when the PBA made it’s brief return to what was then AMF Bowlero.

Even in his relatively short time, Tackett has seen changes on the tour. More players are into fitness, and the growth in college bowling has increased the level of competition and decreased the average age when players peak. Although Pete Weber won a career-high six titles in 2016 at age 54, the prime age is probably 15 to 20 years younger.

The PBA Tour is a hectic lifestyle, but a champion can win $300,000 in a year

Regardless of age, The Tour is a grind, and tournaments, clinics and sponsor appearances keep Tackett on the road about 200 days a year.

“It’s a crazy life, it’s hectic, it’s tough sometimes being away from your friends and family, but these little things right here make it worth it,” Tackett said, tapping on the tall golden cup on the table in front of him, the fourth he had earned this season and 20^th overall.

“It’s tough. We make good money out here. It’s not millions of dollars yet, like golf does, but if you are successful and have some top-10s and top-fives, a couple of wins, you can make a pretty good living doing this and be very, very comfortable.”

The Australian Belmonte, a seven-time player of the year, led the way in tournament prize winnings in 2022 at $302,525. Tackett was sixth at $160,675. The purse for the 14^th World Series of Bowling this week and last totals $820,000.

Milwaukee wasn’t the only traditional market in which the pro game slipped out of the consciousness of the casual local sports fan. Clark points to Akron, Ohio, which hosted the Tournament of Champions from 1965-1994 and then not again until 2018.

PBA players are a hit with Milwaukee bowling fans, and vice versa

“The way you kind of lost track of it is when the PBA stopped being on ABC TV in 1995 or so, they stopped going to 30 cities a year for one stop,” Clark said. “And so by not coming every year, the area got a little more distant from it, only watched it on TV – only the fans watched it on TV – as opposed to being able to come bowl pro-ams every year.

“But now that we’re back here it’s like we never left.”

That’s a stretch in today’s world.

The tournament isn’t as prominent as it once was in the community, but the fans in the bleachers with their signs don’t seem to mind, nor did the teens in the autograph line Monday night or the guy who asked Tackett to sign his belly. (He obliged.)

“Every evening block (of qualifying), when everyone’s off of work, they come in,” Tackett said of the World Series, which began in earnest April 9 after pre-tournament qualifying. “The bowling center was pretty much full every single day. I can’t thank everybody enough for coming out, supporting the PBA, supporting the players, supporting the bowling center.

“I love going to cities and places that the people actually come out and care that we come to town.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: PBA Tour World Series of Bowling continues at Bowlero Wauwatosa