Some of you may have heard of Jason Belmonte, the greatest bowler in the world today. If you haven’t, well, you’re about to find out.
The 36-year old Australian nicknamed “Belmo” has utterly dominated the sport of bowling for basically the entire decade. He joined the PBA tour in the 2008-09 season and took home the Rookie of the Year award. Since his debut, he’s racked up 22 professional titles, four Player of the Year honors and four high average awards (soon to be five for both). His greatness has gone largely unnoticed in the world of sports and arguably even in the bowling community.
Belmonte is often compared to some of the greatest bowlers of all time, such as Walter Ray Williams Jr., Earl Anthony, Norm Duke and Pete Weber. Those names are among the best the sport has ever seen. They are, in order, the top four most accomplished bowlers of all time by titles. Anthony and Weber entered 2019 tied for the all-time record in major titles with ten.
Belmonte should not be listed alongside those bowling legends — he’s already surpassed them all. In fact, comparing Belmonte to other bowlers is an insult to his greatness.
His success on the lanes transcends the sport of bowling. Belmonte’s two-handed style revolutionized the sport, but don’t compare him to Mark Roth — compare him to Stephen Curry. He’s bowling’s most famous celebrity, but don’t compare him to Pete Weber — compare him to LeBron James. Belmonte recently claimed the all-time major titles record, but don’t compare him to Earl Anthony — compare him to Tiger Woods and Serena Williams.
Belmonte’s status in the world of professional sports has gone unappreciated for far too long. It’s time to change that.
REVOLUTIONIZING THE GAME
The first thing you have to know about Jason Belmonte is that he bowls two-handed. When Belmonte first joined the PBA Tour — before he started winning — the two-handed style was completely disrespected and treated as a joke. Think of how basketball viewed small, skinny jump shooters like Curry, or how the NFL viewed the Air Raid offense before the 2007 Patriots. Many people thought two-handed was cheating; some still do. Two-handed bowling, in a way, is like a James Harden step back — there’s nothing wrong with it, but since it looks different and it’s successful, some think it must be cheating.
Belmonte won his first PBA title in 2009 at the The Bowling Foundation Long Island Classic. By re-watching the televised step-ladder finals (shown above), the condescending remarks and pompous tones by the announcers stand out. Check out Belmonte’s shot at the 42:51 second mark. Belmonte flawlessly executes his shot and calls out “Blackjack” (meaning, he “aced” the shot). The announcer, Rob Stone, immediately says “Oh, we’ve seen a lot of good breaks, A LOT OF GOOD BREAKS, today”.
Ummm…. Excuse me? What breaks? Belmonte threw a perfect shot. Imagine Kevin Harlan saying Curry was having a lucky shooting night after swishing a 37-footer. That’s a microcosm of how the sport of bowling as a whole viewed two-handers at the start of Belmonte’s career.
But once Belmonte started winning — and boy did he start winning — everything changed. People in the industry started to appreciate the benefits of the two-handed style. They started noticing the advantages (increased rev rate, ability to open up launch angles), rather than discounting the unconventional style. Similar to how basketball realized an elite jump shooter like Curry creates gravity, or natural floor spacing, bowling began to embrace the two-handed form.
Malcolm Gladwell once wrote “the tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire”. For Belmonte, that moment took place at the 2011 World Series of Bowling. The WSOB is a collection of five tournaments on five different oil patterns. The first four tournaments are independent, but each bowler’s combined score from each event carries over into the fifth event, which is a major.
Belmonte won the Chameleon Open and GEICO Shark Open before claiming the Players Championship for his first major title and third title of the week. The 2011 World Series of Bowling was the moment Belmonte established himself as the face of professional bowling. Stone, seemingly matured from the 2009 broadcast, says after Belmonte claims the Players Championship: “Belmonte has a firm grasp on this sport right now”.
This was Belmonte’s 50-point game in Madison Square Garden. This is when “Belmo” was born. This was that magic moment when Belmonte evolved from an unconventional afterthought into an unassailable force, poised to change the sport of bowling forever.
Belmonte’s 2011 World Series of Bowling performance sparked a two-handed movement. In the 2011-12 season, only one two-hander, Osku Palermaa, joined Belmonte in the top 25 of the PBA earnings list. Even if you extend to the top 50 earners, only Brian Valenta joins the two-handers. By the 2018 season, six two-handers were among the top 50 earners, including the top two (Anthony Simonsen and Belmonte).
The rise of two-handed bowling is best exemplified at the youth level. In 2019, four of the twelve boys on Junior Team USA were two-handed; in 2018, there were five. At the 2019 U.S. Amateur Finals (part of Team USA Trials), two of the three step-ladder finalists were two-handed. Likewise for the 2018 U.S. Amateur Finals. At the youth level, two-handed bowling is taking over the sport.
Wesley Low is a prime example of two-handed bowling success in youth bowling. The most accomplished youth bowler of the decade (and perhaps of all-time), Low is a five-time member of Junior Team USA (2013-16; 2018) and is currently on the adult team. He’s a two-time Junior Gold national champion (2013, 2017), which is the largest annual youth bowling tournament, and the 2019 U.S. Amateur Champion. He’s two-handed.
Another young two-handed talent is Soloman Salama. He won back-to-back Junior Gold titles in the U-15 division in 2016 and 2017. In the 2017 title match, Salama fired a near-perfect 299 game. The rising star is only getting better. He earned a spot on both Junior Team USA and Team USA for 2019 and led qualifying at the 2019 Masters at just sixteen years old. He’s two-handed.
Photo by: USBC
The younger generations are often the fastest to adopt and embrace most global trends — two-handed bowling is no exception. Low and Salama, in a way, are the Trae Young to Belmonte’s Curry. They are wildly talented in their own right, but their path to success was undoubtedly made easier by Belmonte.
The older generations , on the other hand, are typically slow to change. They like to stick to the way things have always been done. That’s not the case with Walter Ray Williams Jr., the PBA’s all-time title holder.
Williams has been tinkering with the two-handed style for about ten years, the exact year Belmonte started on tour. He’s recently started using both hands more often, including at the 2019 USBC Senior Masters. He even fired a 300 game at the PBA50 River City Extreme Open. Williams Jr. said in an interview with FloBowling “Every year, I’d go out on the regular tour and see these kids, and I knew I needed to learn how to bowl two-handed”.
Belmonte dominated the sport so thoroughly that the all-time winningest player believed he couldn’t win without changing his game. Imagine Shaquille O’Neal deciding he needed to shoot three-pointers to be successful. Actually, have you watched the NBA lately? All the big men are shooting threes. The same way Stephen Curry made people who can dunk without jumping start shooting three-pointers, Jason Belmonte made the most accurate one-handed bowler of all-time use two hands.
GROWING HIS BRAND
Jason Belmonte is larger than bowling; he’s become his own brand. Does that sound familiar? It sounds a little like a certain basketball player who enjoys tacos on Tuesday nights. Belmonte, of course, is not as famous as LeBron James, but he has reached a celebrity status that the sport of bowling is not built to handle.
Belmonte has his own app, Bowling by Jason Belmonte, which is easily the coolest bowling video game since Wii Sports Resort. He plays the game himself, and will go on Facebook live to play with his fans personally.
Storm Products, Belmonte’s longtime bowling sponsor, has their own line of Belmonte bowling balls. His debut signature ball, the Timeless, debuted in February of 2017, while the Drive was released in February of 2018. The Pro-Motion, his third and most recent signature ball, came out this past July. No other pro on tour has one signature ball — Belmonte has three and almost certainly more to come.
Belmonte’s viral stardom began in 2014. He had some fun with YouTube’s premier trick shot artists, Dude Perfect. In their first video, Belmonte recorded the world’s longest strike (which has likely been broken). It garnered over 93 million views and their second collaboration gained over 44 million.
Just a few weeks ago, Belmonte teamed up with NASCAR’s Aric Almirola to record the world’s fastest strike. While riding shotgun in Almirola’s race car at over 140 miles per hour, Belmonte launched his signature Pro-Motion out the window, annihilating a set of pins on the racetrack.
Belmonte continues to expand his brand through new and more ambitious lanes (did you like that pun?). In preparation for an upcoming Netflix documentary, he will have a film crew with him at this weekend’s US Open. That’s almost unprecedented in the bowling industry. Pete Weber once starred in an ESPN 30 for 30 short and Anthony Simonsen recently appeared in his own documentary for FloBowling. However, Simonsen’s documentary was buried behind FloBowling’s paywall, so only the devout bowling fans watched it. (I did not even watch it.) Weber achieved his own celebrity status back in his day, but he’s well past his prime. He’s mostly known for those under-25 for his iconic “Who do you think you are, I am” celebration.
When LeBron James celebrated his son’s play during an AAU basketball game, it led every sports show for a week. It even made national news. Belmonte is not quite approaching that level of fame, but he’s about to outgrow the bowling community. Every conversation about professional bowling has to include Belmonte, but soon, every conversation about the greatest athletes of all time will also have to include Belmonte.
TOTAL DOMINATION
While Belmonte has undoubtedly grown the sport of bowling with his radical two-handed style and unparalleled stardom, his true greatness is still on the lanes.
Belmonte entered the 2019 season one shy of the all-time major titles record, held by Earl Anthony and Pete Weber. He captured his 10th major title earlier this year at the Tournament of Champions. He led qualifying and defeated the world’s second best bowler, and top one-hander, E.J. Tackett. His victory put himself in a tie for the all-time major titles record. Keep in mind, Belmonte won his first major only eight years ago. Weber has been on tour since 1979 — it took Belmonte eight years to accomplish what Weber has done in 39 years.
Now seeking the all-time record for himself, Belmonte once again led qualifying at the 2019 Players Championship. This time, he fell short in the title match against Anthony Simonsen, who became the youngest bowler to win two majors at just 22 years old. Belmonte’s quest for history would have to wait… but not much longer.
In March, less than one month later, Belmonte had an opportunity to seize the coveted 11th major title at the PBA World Championship. His determination propelled him to once again lead qualifying (more on that later). In the finals, Belmonte faced off against Jakob Butturff, whose unique left-handed style has garnered almost as much attention as Belmonte’s two-handed style once did.
This time, Belmonte would not be denied. He doubled in the tenth frame to claim his 11th career major, cementing his status as the greatest bowler of all time. Stone, now fully on the Belmo-bandwagon, proclaims after Belmonte’s seals the title “He’s the greatest. HE’S. THE. GREATEST.”
When you dive into his career, however, it becomes clear Belmonte didn’t even need the 11th major to become bowling’s G.O.A.T. It was just icing on the cake — or jelly on the biscuit as they do in Australia (although I doubt anyone actually says that down under).
In individual sports, there is no regular season and playoffs, building to annual national championship. Instead, greatness is determined by an individual’s success in major events that occur four or five times per year. Tiger Woods and Serena Williams have dominated men’s golf and women’s tennis since the late 1990’s. Woods and Williams are known as the greatest individual athletes of this era and arguably all time. Belmonte deserves to be discussed in the same breath.
Bowling and golf are often compared to one another, as there is no physical, head-to-head component of the sports. Two athletes can compete one-on-one, but it’s purely based on score. There is a one huge discrepancy between bowling and golf, though. In golf, champions are determined based on total score through four rounds; in bowling, the top four or five seeds from qualifying are placed in a stepladder to determine a winner. So even if a bowler led qualifying by a thousand pins, they only have about a 50% chance at actually winning the title. Imagine if Tiger Woods lost the 1997 Masters — in which he led by 12 strokes — because some dude eagled a hole against him in a stepladder.
I couldn’t shake Belmonte’s loss to Simonsen at the Players Championship, a tournament in which he led, so I went back through Belmonte’s career finishes in majors. The results, as it turns out, are basically the same. He led qualifying in 11 majors (although not necessarily the same ones). In fact, in the 11 times Belmonte led a major, he only won the title five times — just under 50%.
While combing through Belmonte’s major performances, I discovered an even more impressive statistic. Belmonte has competed in 46 major events, winning 11 of them. That’s a winning percentage of 23.9%. I compared that number to Woods and Williams’ winning percentage in majors. The results confirm by belief that Belmonte belongs in Woods and Williams’ class.
| Athlete | Major Titles | # of Events | Winning % |
| Jason Belmonte | 11 | 46 | 23.9% |
| Tiger Woods | 15 | 82 | 18.3% |
| Serena Williams | 23 | 73 | 31.5% |
It must be noted that Woods’ decade has been derailed by injuries and other personal issues, but nonetheless Belmonte wins majors at a higher percentage than Tiger freakin’ Woods. And yet, the majority of sports fans probably wouldn’t recognize him. Belmonte has gone without due admiration and respect for far too long.
CROWNING MOMENT
Just as there was a moment when Belmonte announced his arrival as bowling’s dominant figure, I think there will be another moment where he indisputably becomes the greatest of all time.
That’s another part of becoming the G.O.A.T.: the narrative. There needs to be a moment more profound than breaking a record. There has to be a story so unbelievable that only one person could have accomplished it. This moment separates that one athlete from every athlete who’s come before.
Woods had his moment this past April at the Masters. He hadn’t won a major in over eleven years, when he won the 2008 US Open in an 18-hole playoff on a broken leg. Nearly everyone had given up hope on Tiger winning another major and giving Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major titles a run. But that’s what legends do — right when you start to give up on them, they give everyone a reminder.
Donning his iconic Sunday red shirt, Tiger took the Masters lead with a birdie on the 15th hole. He never looked back.
Williams’ career speaks for itself. When she won her 23rd Grand Slam singles title against her sister while pregnant, we already knew she was tennis’ unquestioned GOAT — male or female. When she made four Grand Slam finals after giving birth to her daughter, we already knew she was capable of anything. When she inevitably wins her 24th Grand Slam title — tying the all-time record — and extends her record of oldest (male or female) to win a Grand Slam title, that will be her moment.
Belmonte has a long ways to go in his career, but could have his own moment this weekend at the US Open. This season, Belmonte leads all PBA players in average by nearly six pins per game. For the non-bowlers reading this, that’s like James Harden averaging 37 points per game last season (eight more than the next highest). If Belmonte wins his third major of the year — while possibly leading for the fourth time — that should be a worthy narrative, even for those #2Hands haters.
(For what it’s worth, Belmonte currently leads the US Open through the first day of qualifying and wasn’t even happy about it.)
For me personally, Belmonte’s G.O.A.T. moment came earlier this year. Before the season, the PBA announced during the annual players meeting that anyone who shoots a 300 game in the title match at one of four select telecasts would earn a $1 million bonus.
Allegedly, Belmonte joked in the meeting that meant he would have four chances for the $1 million prize. He led all four events, earning the top seed for each stepladder.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter whether that story is true or not. The fact that he could have said it, and then did it, is more than enough.
The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor often says this about LeBron James, but it holds true here: Don’t take Jason Belmonte for granted.