Belmonte and Prather Win Round of 16 Matches to

Advance to PBA Playoffs Round of 8

Playoffs Round of 16 action continues April 29 at 9 p.m. ET p.m. on FS1       

PORTLAND, Maine (April 22, 2019) – In a Round of 16 PBA Playoffs match that featured two of the Go Bowling! PBA Tour’s premier two-handers, No. 1 seed Jason Belmonte of Australia beat No. 17 Kyle Troup of Taylorsville, North Carolina, in a Race to Two Points match at Bayside Bowled that aired on FS1 Monday to advance to the Round of 8.

Also advancing to the Round of 8 was No. 9 Kris Prather of Plainfield, Illinois, who won his first PBA Tour title in the Scorpion Championship at World Series of Bowling X, beating two-time tour winner No. 8 Tom Daugherty of Riverview, Florida, 2-0, in the second Round of 16 match.

For the Race to 2 Points format, each game won in the match is worth one point. If the players split the first two games, a ninth and 10th frame tie-breaker is used to award the deciding point. As the Playoffs reached the Round of 16, the eight winners who advanced from the Round of 24 take on the top eight Playoffs seeds – Belmonte, Jakob Butturff, Norm Duke, Anthony Simonsen, EJ Tackett, Sean Rash, Bill O’Neill and Daugherty – who earned a bye to the Round of 16.

The winner of the Playoffs, which features the top 24 players in competition points after the first 13 Go Bowling! PBA Tour tournaments of the season, will earn a $100,000 first prize.

In front of the raucous Bayside Bowl crowd, Belmonte, who won the PBA World Championship for a record 11th PBA major in February, beat Troup soundly 245-186 in the first game.  Troup, a three-time tour winner with two third-place finishes this season, rebounded in the second game after a slow start with a run of six strikes from the fourth to the ninth frame, beating Belmonte 223-217 to force the 9th and 10th frame roll-off. Belmonte won the roll-off 49-40 benefitting from Troup leaving a solid nine pin on his first ball of the 10th.

“The crowd is so infectious here if I let them in to my head I’ll explode,” said Belmonte of the Bayside Bowl fans.  “I have to balance the electricity generated from the fans with the focus that’s necessary to get the job done.

“Some guys feed on being more animated with the crowd and can get their energy that way,” the four-time PBA Player of the Year added. “We all like the energy from the fans, but for me, if I come out of my zone it will be a distraction so I have to stay in a bubble.”

Prather beat a struggling Daugherty 222-137 in the first game of the second match and then held off  Daugherty, who got back on track in the second game, winning 228-222 to advance to the Round of 8.

“After the first game I obviously knew he (Daugherty) was going to bowl a better game but I felt pretty confident that if I could bowl something in the 220s or 230s I liked my chances,” Prather said. “After the first game, I made a good decision by switching to a ball that went further down the lane before it hooked and that enabled me to control the pocket. I didn’t want to leave the match in the hands of a roll-off so I was glad I could get it done in the second game.”

Round of 16 action continues on FS1 April 29, May 6, and May 13 at 9 p.m. ET, which will determine the top eight for Round of 8 competition May 20 and May 27 that will reduce the field to four survivors who will return to Portland for the semifinal and final rounds June 1-2, with both shows airing live on FOX at noon Eastern.

To view a PBA Playoffs bracket click on

https://www.pba.com/Content/Images/playoffs/2019_PBA_Playoff_Bracket.pdf

PBA PLAYOFFS ROUND OF 16 RESULTS

Bayside Bowl, Portland, Maine

(aired Monday on FS1. Race to 2 Points format. Winners advance to Round of 8. Losers earn $5,000)

Match One

Game 1 - Jason Belmonte, Australia, def. Kyle Troup, Taylorsville, N.C., 245-186.

Game 2 – Troup def. Belmonte, 223-217.

Belmonte won roll-off 49-40.

Match Two

Game 1 – Kris Prather, Plainfield, Ill. def. Tom Daugherty, Riverview, Fla., 222-137.

Game 2 – Prather def. Daugherty, 228-222.

Remaining Round of 16 pairings (Race to 2 Points format based on one point per game won)

Match 11 – Rhino Page, Orlando, Fla., vs. Anthony Simonsen, Little Elm, Texas (airs April 29).
Match 12 – Andres Gomez, Colombia vs. EJ Tackett, Bluffton, Ind. (airs April 29).

Match 13 – Wes Malott, Pflugerville, Texas, vs. Jakob Butturff, Tempe, Ariz. (airs May 6).

Match 14 – Jesper Svensson, Sweden, vs. Bill O’Neill, Langhorne, Pa. (airs May 6).

Match 15 – Dom Barrett, England, vs. Norm Duke, Clermont, Fla. (airs May 13).

Match 16 – Kyle Sherman, O’Fallon, Mo., vs. Sean Rash, Montgomery, Ill. (airs May 13).