PBA Bowling Tour: 2017 season
| PBA Bowling Tour: 2017 Season | |
|---|---|
| League | Professional Bowlers Association |
| Sport | Ten-pin bowling |
| Duration | January 10 – TBD |
| PBA Tour | |
2017 is the 58th season of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) Tour. The 2017 schedule currently has 27 singles title events, two doubles title events, and one non-title team event (PBA League).
For the second year in a row, the PBA held three consecutive major tournaments in "Big February": The Barbasol PBA Players Championship, Fire Lake PBA Tournament of Champions, and the USBC Masters. The U.S. Open is scheduled for October 25 through November 1.
The season's final major, the PBA World Championship, is again part of the World Series of Bowling (WSOB), which takes place November 7–19 at the National Bowling Stadium in Reno, Nevada. WSOB IX consists of four "animal oil pattern" tournaments (Cheetah, Chameleon, Scorpion and Shark), each of which are standalone PBA title events while collectively serving as initial qualifying for the PBA World Championship. Total pinfall from the 40 games of animal pattern qualifying (10 games per tournament) determine the 40 bowlers for the Cashers Round of the World Championship. Cashers will then bowl 20 more games on the World Championship oil pattern to determine the top five for the November 19 live stepladder finals.
In April, the PBA announced the first-ever Main Event PBA Finals, to be held May 18–20 in Orlando, Florida and broadcast for five consecutive Tuesdays on CBS Sports Network, starting May 30. This is an invitational event that serves as a type of bowling "playoffs", similar to The Chase for the Cup in NASCAR or the FedEx Cup in PGA golf. The event features the top eight players in PBA Tour earnings, from the start of the 2015 season through this year's USBC Masters. Players are seeded 1–8 based on earnings, and split into Group 1 (1, 4, 5 and 8 seeds) and Group 2 (2, 3, 6 and 7 seeds). The groups bowl a mixed roundrobin match play session of four matches each, which make up the first two broadcasts. Players are then re-seeded within their groups, based on total pinfall plus a 50 pin bonus for every match win. Group 1 and Group 2 stepladder matches are held next, and are broadcast in the third and fourth weeks. The Group 1 and Group 2 winners then face off in the fifth and final broadcast in a three-game, total pinfall head-to-head match to determine the PBA Finals champion.
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