Young Tang brothers to vie for doubles title
The generation gap on the Professional Bowlers Association tour was closed abruptly by Darren Tang, 24, and younger brother Michael, 22, on Friday night in the final qualifying game for Sunday’s Mark Roth/Marshall Holman Doubles Championship.
Climbing from No. 8 when the day began to No. 5 in the standings, they just needed to maintain in their 16th game of the double session at Wayne Webb’s Columbus Bowl. They did so, but it came against the sixth-place team of Norm Duke, 53, and Wes Malott, 41, two legends in the game. That wasn’t lost on the brothers.
“The main thing was just to focus on bowling, don’t look at the scores, don’t look at who we’re bowling against,” Darren Tang said. “I mean, it’s really cool. We grew up watching these guys and now we’re bowling against them, so it’s definitely something to come out and make shows.”
From San Francisco, the Tangs — they started bowling on the same day, Darren at age 8, Michael at 6, because their mother worked at a bowling center — will compete as a team for the first time in the PBA ranks on a televised finals show Sunday. The doubles competition will start at 5 p.m., about 90 minutes after the stepladder finals of the week’s main event, the Barbasol Players Championship, a PBA major, at 1:30 p.m.
In both tournaments, Jason Belmonte will go in as the No. 1 seed, having dominated qualifying for the Players, thus setting himself and teammate Bill O’Neill in the unchallenged position as the No. 1 seed in the doubles.
With the seeding based on total pinfall for the week, he and O’Neill wound up with a 327 advantage over E.J. Tackett and Marshall Kent.
Third was the team of Kristopher Prather and Chillicothe’s Brandon Novak, while fourth were D.J. Archer and Shawn Maldonado. It was no coincidence the top three were led by the top three qualifiers for the Players, Kent at No. 2 behind Belmonte and Prather No. 3.
That’s the main reason why Novak, 29, who was 31st in the Players qualifying, still has a shot at gaining his first PBA tour title while teaming up with Prather. And they weren’t even teammates until the week began, each picking the other off a need-a-partner list provided by Mary von Krueger, PBA Tour entries manager.
“Everything just clicked; he carried me when I was bowling bad, I carried him when he was bowling bad,” Novak said. “It all worked out. It’s pretty crazy.”
Now he has the chance to win his first PBA title in front of what amounts to his home crowd, with a strong contingent from Chillicothe cheering him on Friday night.
“It means the world to me,” Novak said, pointing out the steady progress he feels he’s made the past couple of seasons. “Hopefully, we can make something happen on Sunday.”