BY AARON SMITH

LAS VEGAS - A pair of top-tier senior events are headed to Sam's Town Bowling Center as the Super Senior Classic and United States Bowling Congress Senior Masters will take over the 56-lane venue for nearly two weeks of competition.

The Super Senior Classic features to top bowlers age 60 and over and will run from June 2-5. The official practice session for the USBC Senior Masters, for bowlers age 50 and up, will be June 6, before competition takes place June 7-12.

BowlTV.com will provide wire-to-wire livestream coverage of each event, including the stepladder finals.

USBC and Professional Bowlers Association Hall of Famer Amleto Monacelli of Venezuela enters the Super Senior Classic as the defending champion, while 2021 PBA50 Player and Rookie of the Year Tom Hess of Granger, Iowa, will look to make another memorable run in the double-elimination bracket at the Senior Masters after capturing the win at Sam's Town in 2021.

All competitors at the Super Senior Classic will bowl two six-game blocks of qualifying, starting Thursday. Each squad will bowl one block on the fresh oil pattern and one round on the burn.

After 12 games, the top 44 athletes from the 176-player field will advance to Saturday's Cashers' Round, which will feature an additional six games.

Total pinfall for 18 games will determine the 12 players advancing to the match-play portion of the Super Senior Classic.

The match-play finalists will be split into two groups for six games of round-robin competition, with the top finisher in each group earning an automatic spot in Sunday's stepladder based on 24-game pinfall totals, including 30 bonus pins for each win. The final seeding will be determined by total pinfall.

The second, third and fourth seeds from each group will face off in simultaneous group stepladders starting Sunday at noon Eastern, before the main four-player stepladder for the title and $7,500 top prize begins at 2 p.m. Eastern.

The winners of each group stepladder will claim the No. 3 and No. 4 spots in the finals, with seeding based on their average for the event.

At the 2021 event, Monacelli earned the top seed and rolled 11 strikes in the title match against 2017 Super Senior Classic champion Ron Mohr of Las Vegas on the way to a 279-201 victory.

The Senior Masters, a major championship on the PBA50 Tour schedule, will feature three five-game rounds of qualifying over three days, starting Tuesday. After 15 games, the top 63 players based on total pinfall will join Hess in the double-elimination match-play bracket.

As the defending champion, Hess is guaranteed a spot in the bracket and can improve his seeding based through qualifying. If he qualifies outside of the top 63 spots, he'll be placed as the No. 64 seed.

All pinfall will drop heading into bracket play June 10, and all matches will be contested in a three-game total pinfall format until the top five players are determined for the stepladder finals. The stepladder for the 2022 Senior Masters will be June 12 at 1 p.m. Eastern.

Since the stepladder will be broadcast on BowlTV, the top seed will have to be defeated twice in the true double-elimination format. The winner of the 2022 Senior Masters will take home a first-place prize of $20,000.

In 2021, Hess earned his spot in the stepladder through the Elimination Bracket as the No. 4 seed and climbed the ladder to secure the victory. He defeated USBC and PBA Hall of Famer Chris Barnes of Denton, Texas, twice in the finals, 278-226 and 237-203.

The win also made Hess one of four players to win both the USBC Masters and Senior Masters after collecting his lone PBA Tour title at the major championship in 2011.

The 2022 Senior Masters field will feature more than 260 bowlers competing at Sam's Town.Skip Ad