So who is the GREATEST MALE bowler of all-time?

[SeanGothe]

I suppose we have to start from the beginning of the PBA in 1959. Prior to that time there were only a few tournaments of significance held each year.
There are only 16 men who have won at least 20 or more titles since the PBA began.
Now some players keep bowling long after they have lost their genuine ability to actually win. Therefore a fairer measure is looking at titles won in relation to the duration of time from their first title to their last success.
Walter Ray Williams 47 titles 1986-2010
Earl Anthony 43 1970-1984
Norm Duke 40 1983-2019
Pete Weber 37 1982-2013
Parker Bohn III 35 1987-2015
Mark Roth 34 1975-1995
Dick Weber 30 1959-1977
Mike Aulby 29 1979-2001
Don Johnson 26 1964-1977
Jason Belmonte 26 2008-2022
Brian Voss 25 1983-2010
Marshall Holman 22 1975-1996
Dick Ritger 20 1966-1979
Tommy Jones 20 2004-2020
Wayne Webb 20 1978-1997
Amleto Monacelli 20 1987-2016

We can be as parochial and biased as we like and I am sure that Belmo has a few more titles still to come but Early Anthony doesn't even have a competitor in this discussion. He won 3 titles per year. No-one else is even close. After Earl, Walter Ray Williams, Don Johnson & Belmo are very tightly grouped as the next best 3 in terms of titles won measured against the length of the winning part of their competitive careers.

Prizemoney: (simply a comparison - no measure of bowling performance)
Earl won around $1.25 million USD 1970-84. Using the half way point in 1977 the median house price in Sydney was $39,200 AUD.
Belmo has won around $2 million USD 2008-2022. Using the half way point in 2015 the median house price in Greater Sydney was $865,000 AUD and using the City of Sydney it was $1.219 million AUD.
It is very disappointing as the best players of the 1970's & 80's were able to make an excellent living. This is far from the case now.

As an example of how modern day hype overrides fact:
Serena Willams 1999-2017 23 Majors. Total Singles titles won 73. How often is she called the greatest? Amazing how quickly people forget Steffi.
Steffi Graf 1987-1999 22 Majors. Total Singles titles won 107.
This (Greatest of all time) comment is thrown around like confetti.

 

[SeanGothe]

Jason Belmonte has recently won his 26 & 27th PBA titles - $100,000 & $20,000 USD or $139,330 & $27,866 AUD.
Neil Robertson (born in Melbourne) has recently won his 21st & 22nd titles on the World Snooker Tour. His winnings were 250,000 and 125,000 GBP or $473,731 & 236,865 AUD.
So Belmonte collected an estimated $167,000 AUD and Robertson walked away with around $710,000.
WHY? It just doesn't seem equitable.
Snooker administrators obviously are doing something right. Their sport is booming and paying prize money which actually rewards the elite players for their success. Perhaps it is time bowling tried to learn from other similar sports. Snooker proves that an indoor sport can be successful without being able to accommodate big crowds.
The prize money on both the PBA tour and the ladies PWBA tour is pathetic.
If bowling doesn't get its act in order quickly and start rewarding its stars appropriately there won't be professional tours for much longer.
As I intimated in the previous post - 45 years ago Earl could have purchased a couple of nice streets, today's leading players might manage to buy a reasonable home after taxes and expenses.

 

[willey]

It's all about Sponsorship Sean. In the 50's when Golf and Bowling had their Pro Tours the Prize Money was much the same but Golf got all the biggest sponsors. Just take a look at the Bowlers Journal, now I don't know if it is still in Publication, I know they did not get Advertising revenue from the big Airlines, Hotels, Rental Cars etc, even though the Bowling Nationals was one of the biggest Tournaments in the World and attracted thousands of teams to one City, that would last for months. The WIBC would have been the biggest Women's Tournament in the World, were talking 40,000 teams of Bowlers, yet the Airlines etc never Advertised in the Bowlers Journal but gladly Advertised in Golf, the CEO's of those Companies would rather rub shoulders with Golfers, bowling was looked down on by the Elite. It seems to be getting better in America with Bowling now on Fox, this should help.
In Australia, when AMF was in charge, they decided to cut all Advertising, so you cannot expect Newspapers or TV to report on the Sport that does not support them. Simple.

 

[SeanGothe]

Yes Willey that is my point. What are administrators doing to address the lack of sponsorship? Snooker obviously has it right but bowling certainly doesn't. There shouldn't be such an inequity. I agree that Golf and Bowling had similar levels of prize money in the 1950s & 60s and your reasons given are historically correct. It is worth noting that in 1964 Don Carter and Ebonite signed a $1million USD deal, the largest sports endorsement deal at the time. Carter set himself up for life following that arrangement. He was a pretty bright individual.
Bowlers Journal is still in operation and I have been subscribing for 37 years. It is probably the only publication on the planet where people who actually write about bowling can genuinely back it up with real knowledge.

 

[SeanGothe]

Willey, you got me thinking about Bowlers Journal and closer to home.
Back in the 70's and 80's Pin Action was a fantastic magazine covering Australian bowling. I felt privileged to be able to contribute some stories. Bob Cook did an absolutely incredible job on a minimal budget to produce a fantastic and informative publication. There were wonderful pieces written by Steve Jones, Phil Brook, Steve Mackie, Brenton Davy and many others along the way. Unfortunately we no longer have a publication written by people who actually know anything about the game and that is a great loss to the sport in Australia.The United States still has the Bowlers Journal which is covered by people with real knowledge of our game. Lyle Zikes who I have known for almost 30 years (I always stay with his parents when I am in the US) may know more about the game (certainly at a professional level) than any other living person. He is a brilliant writer by any measurement but his knowledge of our great game is second to one. It would be great if Australian Bowling could once again have a publication written for bowlers by people that actually know what they are talking about.

 

[willey]

I did have a subscription for Bowlers Journal for a while but when I sent in the renewal form with my American Express numbers it didn't arrive, at the time I had left working in Bowling Centre's. I worked for 38 years in Bowling Centre's before I left 17 years ago, I could see the writing on the wall. While I worked in the Centre's I never needed to buy the Journal or the Pin Actions, because they were readily available for me to read. I don't know who in the game now that would start up a paper, I did casually know Bob Cook, I worked with Chris Batson at Bankstown, he was my Manager, but I was always in Awe of Chris so I couldn't walk up to him to have a conversation, at one time Steve Mackie was my Regional Manager, I even stayed at his place once, he sold me his Bar Fridge when he went to America, I didn't need a Bar Fridge but he was a good Salesman.

So who can start up a paper, Queensland seems to be the best area for Tournaments at the moment, maybe someone there is capable, I know the Tournament scene has been destroyed over the years, it didn't take long. It took quite a few years to build in Australia, I remember the early day's, the first Tournament I bowled in was 1 game Qualifying and 3 games in the final, all you had to do was beat your average, I ran second in the final in the Centre than we had a State Final at Balgowlah, I was 16 and worried because you needed to be 17 to compete. Than a lot of AMF centre's had thier own Grand Prix style events, even before the Grand Prix circuit started and I remember it was when Mackie joined Amf, he was responsible for putting it all together, The SPC was almost a Grand Prix circuit on it's own, every 2 weeks there was a Centre Final with qualifying in between, all destroyed because the Management of Amf found it too hard to do.

It only needs to start small again and someone to have Vision, I don't bowl, not because I don't want to but I cannot bowl on Synthetic Approaches, every Centre in Newcastle has Synthetic Approaches. One of the problems of Tournaments was the Prize Money, they were still paying around $1200 a win 20 years after the early Grand Prix events were paying $1200 for a the winner, I know the cost of games was the biggest increase over that time and I worked in Liverpool when they paid $4000 to the winners of the Trish Datson in the early 80's, this money was put up by all the Sponsor's of the Tournament, so were back to Sponsorship and Advertising again, this requires people to get off their Butts and work, the old Amf Centre's didn't have Managers in them anymore, I rated them Assistant Managers, as they were told exactly what to do from higher up the chain of Command, this is where it ALL WENT WRONG, the early Grand Prix's were owned by the Manager and the Centre Employees and they made it work. If we could only go back to that style of Management.

So we need to pray for a Visionary to come a long and fix the Game, here's hoping.