EJ Tackett, the reigning PBA Player of the Year, achieved a rare feat in 2023: capturing the Triple Crown of professional bowling, a distinction held by only eight others. His victory at the U.S. Open, secured with two consecutive strikes in the final frame against rival Kyle Troup, fulfilled a childhood dream – one that once included aspirations of a different U.S. Open, on the golf course.
Tackett, 33, was a highly ranked junior golfer, competing alongside future PGA stars Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele, and Justin Thomas at the 2010 U.S. Junior Amateur and Junior PGA championships. He continued playing Division I golf before ultimately focusing on bowling. He has since amassed 27 tour titles, including seven majors, positioning him for a likely first-ballot Hall of Fame induction.
“I was 3 or 4 years old when I started going out with my dad,” Tackett recalled in an interview with Golf Journal, a quarterly publication for USGA members. “He used to play a skins game on Saturday and Sunday morning, small-town stuff. Dad would let me drive off the tee, pick up my ball, take it to his ball and let me hit from there, then chip and putt around the green.” He benefited from friendly competition with a local peer. “The grandson of the guy who owned the course was the same age as me—he actually owns the course now. As I got a bit older, he and I would play chipping and putting games and hit balls at the range. So, I had someone challenging me to get better.”
Tackett’s foray into junior tournaments began around age 12, participating in a Pepsi-sponsored tour in Indiana categorized by soft drink brands. A dominant summer in 2010 led to qualifications for both the U.S. Junior Amateur and the Junior PGA. The Junior PGA, held at Sycamore Hills in Fort Wayne, Indiana, proved a learning experience. “The first round I was nervous and played absolutely horrendously—I think I shot 85,” Tackett said. “Justin Thomas set the course record that day with 65.” A rainout allowed for adjustments. “I went to the driving range with Dad and got my swing straightened out. I shot even-par 72 the second round, which wasn’t decent enough to make the cut but at least I redeemed myself.” At the U.S. Junior Amateur at Egypt Valley in Michigan, he narrowly missed the cut for match play.
Tackett’s simultaneous success in bowling was also taking shape. In 2011, he made Junior Team USA and qualified for bowling’s U.S. Open, finishing 20th. The decision to prioritize bowling came after three semesters at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne (now Purdue Fort Wayne). “I decided that I wasn’t good enough to play golf,” he explained. “I wasn’t seeing the results that I thought I should see. I hated school and just didn’t want to do it anymore. My parents owned a bowling center my whole life, and they haven’t been well off, so I always worked a lot at the center, too. I wasn’t living on campus, I was commuting an hour back and forth to school, trying to work every day—it was maybe a little too much for me to handle. I decided to try a different path. I knew I was always really good at bowling. I got my PBA card in October of 2012, and here we are.”
Tackett identifies significant technical parallels between the two sports. “There are a ton of parallels. I’m not a big guy—5-foot-8, 150 pounds, but I’m pretty powerful in each sport. My swing path goes out-to-in on the backswing in each. If you look closely at my footwork in bowling, when I get to the [foul] line, you’ll sometimes see my heel coming off the ground. That’s using the ground as leverage, just like a golfer does. They load up the left knee, and it straightens as they turn through the ball, and sometimes that left heel is coming off the ground.” He also highlighted the importance of timing. “Then there’s the old term: ‘Wait on it.’ If you’re trying to make things happen too early in your swing, it throws your timing off and you get herky-jerky.”
The mental game, Tackett noted, is crucial in both disciplines. “A lot of ‘perfect’ shots in bowling don’t produce strikes. It seems like dealing with bad breaks, or what feel like bad breaks, is critical. In golf, at least in stroke play, you’re really playing against the course. In bowling, you’re bowling against the lane conditions. The guys who can overcome, who don’t overthink things and play what’s in front of them, they’re the ones you see on TV week in and week out. In golf and in bowling, it’s one shot at a time. As you can’t change what already happened, and you can only control what’s about to happen. And that’s it.”
Both sports involve a degree of individual competition alongside others. “I’m just out there trying to do the best I can. I pay attention to what the other guys are doing in that we’re always moving lanes, changing bowling balls because of the conditions. If someone is bowling really well, I might look at what kind of ball they’re using, where they’re standing to start, the line they’re playing, trying to get a better visual that might support me. It’s not like I’m sitting in the back rooting someone else on or yelling for them to get a split.”
The disparity in financial rewards between professional golf and bowling is a recurring thought. “All the time, because I did play golf and still always watch it. I won five times (including two majors) in 2023. I bowled extremely well—and I was $40,000 from making half a million dollars. So, if you get to a high level, you can be, not rich, but definitely not poor. But would it be nice to make those million-dollar paychecks? Absolutely. If bowling was making what golf made, I would’ve earned 15 or 20 million dollars before the FedEx Cup.” He acknowledged ongoing efforts to elevate the sport. “It’s, like, dang, if we had bowling for, you know, half a million or even a million dollars in major championships, that revolutionizes the sport and takes it to a different level. I know that the people in charge of bowling are doing their best. It’s always a work in progress.”
Tackett also described the close-knit nature of the PBA tour, often requiring shared accommodations. “We spend more time with each other than we do with our families. I’m gone 200 days a year. There’s a bunch of my buddies that are always getting dinner when we’re done, going for lunch, having a few beers, hanging out. This proves fun, like having a family away from home. I did start staying by myself in rooms a bit more recently. I’ve got to the point in my career where I don’t have to share a room with someone to save a bit of money every week.”
He concluded by noting the common misconception about the difficulty of both sports. “They don’t understand the preparation that it takes—gym time, practice, eating right, and everything that goes into being successful. On the PBA Tour, you’re often bowling on oil patterns as difficult as U.S. Open golf conditions. As in golf, the precision needed is unreal. What makes both sports so great is that you are in control of so much but also in control of so little at the same time.”
Leave a Reply