If you’re looking for ways to improve your game in your in home bowling alley, there’s no better way than watching the pros playing against each other. Thankfully, there’s plenty of opportunities available, as the World Bowling Tour is underway and gathering some of the best players from around the world to compete against each other all year long.

International Tour Brings Bowling to the World

The 2015 World Bowling Tour is an international event, one that began in January and will end in December. During that time, affiliated tournaments will be held across the world: locations include Helsinki, Finland; Daejeon, Korea; Doha, Qatar; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and more.

When bowlers participate in the events that make up the World Bowling Tour, they earn points that determine their international ranking. Each comes with its own prize money for winners and runner-ups.

Inaugural Bowling World Open to Be Held in Tokyo

This year, the inaugural Bowling World Open will be held in Tokyo, Japan, from July 9th to 12th. The Bowling World Open is the 13th event of the 2015 World Bowling Tour, and is considered one of the Tour’s “major” tournaments, meaning that it awards double ranking points. On top of that, it is the Tour event with the largest prize fund, totaling out at 48 million Yen (or $400,000 U.S. dollars, approximately), with $10 million Yen going to both the men’s champion and the women’s champion. First runner-ups will receive 5 million Yen each, and third place finishers will receive 1.5 million Yen each.

Registration for the event opened on April 27th, with 100 spots in the men’s tournament and 80 spots for the women’s tournament available. There are 110 spots available in the qualifying round for both divisions; 20 spots will be filled with the top contenders from the international preliminaries, 12 from the local preliminaries, with the remaining 78 going to invited players.

The international preliminaries for the event will be held on July 9th and 10th in the bowling center at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel. On July 11th, the main event qualifying round will be held at Round1 Minamisuma bowling center, where the local preliminaries will both be held.

After the qualifying rounds have been completed, the finals will be held on Sunday, July 12. The event is scheduled to take place in the exhibition hall at Tokyo’s Makuhari-Messe convention center, in a special six-lane arena installed for the BWO. The BWO finals will also be broadcast on TV Tokyo.

During the tournament, the 110 bowlers in each division (men’s and women’s) will bowl five qualifying games. After that, the top 33 will advance to the semifinals, a three-game round from which the top 4 players will move on to the finals. The finals are single-elimination matches, where the top seeded player will bowl the number 4 seed, with the second-seeded player taking on the 3rd seed. The winners of those two matches will then bowl for the title and the 10 million Yen top prize.

For more bowling world info, contact us today at (310) 532-6091.