Best Bowlers of All Time

Believe it or not, there was a time when professional bowling was one of the most popular sports on television. For more than three decades, from the early 1960s to late 1990s, the Professional Bowlers Tour was a staple of Saturday afternoon sports programming on ABC, as the prelude to its iconic “Wide World of Sports.” Bowlers like Dick and Pete Weber, Earl Anthony, Marshall Holman and Walter Ray Williams Jr. became household names.

Those days are long gone amid the media saturation of mainstream sports like football and basketball and the emergence of popular new ones such as mixed martial arts. Still, the professional men’s and women’s bowling tours have chugged on in the recesses of cable sports television, with new stars and more fashionable attire.

Here’s a look at the greatest bowlers of all time. 

PBA Tour titles: 3

Bottom line: Michigan native Andrew Anderson was named the 2018 PBA Player of the Year at just 23 years old following his win at the 2018 USBC Masters. 

Anderson, who bowled collegiately at Davenport University in Michigan, was only in his second full season as a pro in 2018 and also brought home a gold medal in Trios at the World Bowling Championships that same year. 

PWBA/Professional Tour titles: 4

Bottom line: Clara Guerrero burst onto the international bowling scene in her native Colombia in the early 2000s. She has competed for Team Colombia for the last 20 years, making her first appearance at the World Bowling Championships in 2003. 

While she’s won one PWBA event in her career, Guerrero’s biggest successes have been in international competition, where she’s won gold medals in the Pan Am Games, World Games and World Bowling Championships. 

PBA Tour titles: 5

Bottom line: Minneapolis native Bob Strampe was a bowling star in his hometown before moving to Detroit to play for team sponsored by Stroh’s beer, where he became a four-time American Bowling Congress champion. 

Strampe went on to win the BPAA All-Star in 1963, PBA National in 1964 and the ABC Masters in 1966. One of just a handful of bowlers with 300 games in five different decades, he was inducted into the USBC Hall of Fame in 1977 and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. 

PBA Tour titles: 8

Bottom line: Las Vegas native Don McCune saw the height of his bowling fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he posted 10 top-10 finishes at the USBC Open Championships and won titles in the Classic Team event in 1968 and the Classic Doubles event in 1969. 

On the PBA Tour, McCune truly became a star, racking up eight tour wins. Six of those wins came in 1973, when he swept PBA Player of the Year and International Bowling Media Association Player of the Year honors. 

McCune’s son, Eugene McCune, also bowled professionally on the PBA Tour.