With his family in his thoughts, Sharp rallied to win all six of his matches Tuesday with a 13-3 record. After a 3-1 win in the Round of 32, Sharp swept three-time defending PBA Senior Player of the Year Tom Baker, 3-0, which gave him a boost of confidence.

“He told me, ‘You better win this whole thing or I’m going to kick your you-know-what,’” Sharp said of Baker.

And that he did. After wins of 3-1 in the best-of-five Round of 16 and 2-1 in the best-of-three Round of 8, Sharp knocked off Bill Argenbright, 218-181 in the semifinals to set up a match against Zurich, the 2007 PBA Senior Rookie of the Year.

Sharp jumped out to an early lead against Zurich with strikes in the first three frames and looked like he might threaten to take home the $50,000 Capri Bowling Lanes Proprietor Mike Irwin offered to any bowler who could shoot 300 in the title match. But after he failed to strike in the next frame, Sharp missed the single-pin conversion and opened in two of the next three frames.

In the driver’s seat to win his second career title, Zurich left a pocket 7-10 split in the eighth frame and Sharp took advantage by striking three consecutive times in the eighth, ninth and 10th to tie the match.

Zurich went first in the roll-off and left the 2-8. Sharp then stepped up and got a tough nine pins for the victory.

“When it left my hand I actually didn’t think it was going to hit the head pin and it barely got back,” Sharp (Orlando, Fla.), who used a ball Tuesday he hadn’t used all week, said. “I’m exhausted. I’m excited, happy and all of the above. Last year I won two Senior Regional events and those were my first two PBA titles. And now to top it off with a national title, I feel like all the hard work has paid off.”

Sharp took home $8,000 for his victory while Zurich pocketed $4,500 for his runner-up finish. Argenbright (Fisherville, Va.) and Dale Traber (Cedarburg, Wis.) took home $3,000 each for third and fourth.

The PBA Senior Tour moves to Rockford, Ill., for the Columbia 300 PBA Ladies and Legends presented by MGD 64, May 2-5 at The Cherry Bowl. The event features the top senior bowlers and top female bowlers coming together for a doubles event, with the winning team taking home $15,000 on Monday, May 5.

PBA Senior Tour
2008 PBA Senior Dayton Classic
Capri Bowling Lanes
Dayton, Ohio
Tuesday, April 29

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
(Single-game match. Winner earns $8,000, loser earns $4,500.)
#22 Keith Sharp, Orlando, Fla., def. #9 Sam Zurich, Grant, Fla., 201-201*
*Sharp won in a one-ball sudden-death roll-off, 9-8.

ROUND OF 4
Single-game matches. Losers eliminated, earn $3,000.)
#9 Sam Zurich, Grant, Fla., def. #4 Dale Traber, Cedarburg, Wis., 243-238.
#22 Keith Sharp, Orlando, Fla., def. #23 Bill Argenbright, Fisherville, Va., 218-181.

PBA ANNOUNCES 2007-2008 SEASON ENDING AWARDS

The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) announced today season-ending awards for the 2007-08 Denny’s PBA Tour. Chris Barnes took home Chris Schenkel PBA Player of the Year honors, Rhino Page was voted Harry Golden PBA Rookie of the Year and Riga Kalfas was named the Steve Nagy Sportsmanship Award recipient.

Barnes won the PBA Player of the Year Award for the first time in his 10-year career, leading the first-ever PBA Player of the Year point rankings. In the past, the award was voted on by PBA membership and media but prior to this season a point system was implemented.

With a Tour-leading nine championship round appearances and two titles, along with a runner-up finish in the H&R Block Tournament of Champions, Barnes racked up 64 points, edging out six-time PBA Player of the Year Walter Ray Williams Jr. by just two points.

Barnes excelled in the second half of the season to overtake Williams, who led the race in 13 of the season’s first 15 weeks. Following a heartbreaking loss to Michael Haugen Jr. in the title match of the H&R Block Tournament of Champions, Barnes rebounded two weeks later to make his fourth consecutive championship round appearance and win the 2008 Bayer Classic in El Paso, Texas.

Barnes and Williams traded places atop the standings over the next few weeks until Barnes took the lead for good with his second win of the season in the 2008 Don Johnson Buckeye State Classic in Columbus, Ohio. The victory was the 10th of his career.

“It’s a great feeling to win the award after being so close in so many different seasons,” Barnes (Double Oak, Texas) said. “It was a season with many ups and downs on television, but bouncing back and winning the last two times I was on TV was a special time in my career.”

In addition to leading the Tour in championship round appearances, Barnes also made a Tour-leading 18 match play appearances in 21 events and finished second in average (225.18) and in the PBA World Point Rankings. Barnes’ $142,410 in season earnings ranked fifth.

Barnes, who was the 1998 PBA Rookie of the Year, joins Mike Aulby and Tommy Jones as the only bowlers to win both the Player and Rookie of the Year Awards in their careers.

Williams fell just shy of what would have been his record-breaking seventh PBA Player of the Year Award. He was one of six players to win two titles in 2007-08, both of which came in the first half of the season. At 48 years old, Williams proved to still be a dominant force on the Tour, earning his record-breaking seventh career George Young High Average Award with a 228.34 average, the second-highest season average in PBA history. He also won the Harry Smith Point Leader Award for the record seventh time in his career.

Finishing third in the race was Norm Duke, who went on an incredible late-season run to win both the Denny’s World Championship and 65th Denny’s U.S. Open which gave him a Tour-leading $176,855 in earnings. The win also made him just the second bowler in history to complete the Grand Slam – wins in the USBC Masters, Tournament of Champions, World Championship and U.S. Open – joining Aulby in accomplishing the rare feat.

Mike Scroggins, another two-time winner, finished fourth while Michael Haugen Jr., Tommy Jones and Mika Koivuniemi tied for fifth.

Page ran away with the PBA Rookie of the Year Award after putting together perhaps the greatest rookie season in PBA history. He set rookie records in earnings ($84,811) and championship round appearances (five) and became just the eighth Rookie of the Year to win a title in their first season and the first since C.K. Moore in 1996, when he captured the 2008 Go RVing Classic.

“I’m really excited to receive the award. It’s a great honor,” Page (Topeka, Kan.) said. “It’s nice for it to be official since I knew I had a good chance. It’s definitely the icing on the cake for a season I couldn’t have even dreamed about.”

The Team USA member joined the PBA in October and made an immediate impact, finishing second in the first Denny’s PBA Tour Qualifying Round (TQR) of the season in the Motor City Classic and first in the following week’s Etonic Championship TQR. It was a sign of things to come as Page broke nearly every record for qualifiers, advancing through the qualifier 12 times, leading the TQR on three occasions and making match play nine times as a qualifier.

“I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I knew how tough it was to get through the TQR and it was definitely a learning process” Page said. “My first three times in match play I had to face Pete Weber, Chris Barnes and Chris Loschetter and lost in seven games each time. It was like, “holy cow, I’m getting thrown into the lion’s den.’ But the next time I knew what to expect and how to handle myself and the learning curve was quicker because of that.”

In the TQR for the Lumber Liquidators Championship, Page broke the PBA’s seven-game scoring record with a 1,883 seven-game pinfall for a 269.00 average. He finished the season fourth on Tour in average (223.42), ninth in the PBA World Point Rankings, and was 10th in the PBA Player of the Year rankings, posting two runner-up finishes in addition to his victory.

Page’s win made him just the third bowler to capture a title after qualifying through the TQR.

“Very few things can really stack up to what that win meant to me,” Page said of his victory in Norwich. “I’m a pretty emotional guy anyway, but I was fighting off tears on the show because it hit me all at once. After my first shot in the 10th it was such a great feeling because I had this self-created monkey on my back after the four shows where I didn’t win. It was kind of a relief actually.”

Page won in a landslide, receiving 89.38 percent of the votes. Finishing a distant second was Todd Book, who made one championship round – placing fourth in the Lake County Indiana Classic – and finished 29th in the PBA World Point Rankings to regain his exemption for 2008-09. Steve Harman, who was 34th in points and also will be back as an exempt bowler next season, finished third.

Kalfas was voted the Steve Nagy Sportsmanship Award winner by his peers after finishing second in the voting to Richard Wolfe last season.

In his second year as an exempt bowler, Kalfas made seven match play appearances and finished in the top 10 on three occasions, placing eighth in both the Spartanburg Classic and PBA Exempt Doubles Classic, where he teamed up with fellow lefty Eric Forkel.

“To me, it s a huge honor,” Kalfas (Florence, Ky.) said. “To be exempt for two years and be voted second last year and first this year, it’s nice to know the guys respect me. I just try to treat everyone the way I would like to be treated, it’s the golden rule. Hopefully it rubs off.”

While he finished 41st in the PBA World Point Rankings to fall just shy of regaining his exemption for the 2008-09 season, Kalfas kept a positive attitude all season which earned the respect of his peers.

Jack Jurek, the 2005-06 Steve Nagy Sportsmanship Award winner, was second, while four-time Steve Nagy winner Parker Bohn III and Mike Mineman tied for third. Tom Baker, Mitch Beasley and Mike Edwards also received votes.

Steve Nagy, a member of the USBC and PBA Halls of Fame, is the namesake of the PBA’s Sportsmanship Award. The award is given annually to the PBA professional who demonstrates the highest degree of sportsmanship on Tour.

The PBA Player of the Year Award is named after long-time television play-by-play announcer Chris Schenkel. The late Schenkel provided commentary for the PBA on ABC for 36 years and was elected to the PBA Hall of Fame in 1976. The Harry Golden PBA Rookie of the Year Award is named after PBA Hall of Famer Harry Golden, who served as the PBA Tour’s Tournament Director for 29 years before retiring in 1990.

The new PBA Player of the Year points system, implemented prior to the start of the 2007-08 season, awards points on a sliding scale to the top four finishers in single elimination events and the top five in round robin standard events. More points are awarded for top finishes in Major events.

The PBA Rookie of the Year award is voted on by PBA members and the media after the completion of each season. The Steve Nagy Sportsmanship Award is voted on by PBA members who competed in at least half of the events during the 2007-08 Denny’s PBA Tour season.