Bowling superstar EJ Tackett can probably also beat you at golf

This interview was first published in Golf Journal, a quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA Member today.

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Only six men — Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy — have won golf’s career Grand Slam. EJ Tackett became just the ninth to capture the Professional Bowlers Association’s equivalent, the Triple Crown, at the 2023 U.S. Open in his home state of Indiana. Needing a strike and eight pins in the last frame to defeat his rival, friend and golf buddy Kyle Troup, Tackett “shoed up and stepped up,” as they say on the lanes, crushing the pocket twice for strikes to fulfill his childhood dream.

Well, one of his childhood dreams — it could have been a U.S. Open golf triumph, too.

Tackett, now 33 and starring alongside Troup in HBO Max’s new documentary series, “Born to Bowl,” was an elite junior golfer as well as bowler, competing against the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas at the 2010 U.S. Junior Amateur and Junior PGA championships and later playing Division I golf before turning his attention to knocking down pins with a bowling ball instead. The four-time and reigning PBA Player of the Year has since won 27 tour titles, including seven majors, and will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Tackett’s career numbers put him at least in line with what Scheffler, Spieth and Rory McIlroy have achieved in professional golf, except for his Q rating and bank account — bowling’s popularity and prize money, while on the rise again, still lag golf’s by a country mile and a half. The highly entertaining “Born to Bowl” has the potential to change that, at least marginally. Regardless, if Tackett only recently stopped having to share hotel rooms on the road, he hasn’t just left his mark on bowling but also still finds time to maintain a better-than-scratch golf game. Which begs the question: Can JT bowl a 300? Color us doubtful.

How did you get started in golf?

I was 3 or 4 years old when I started going out with my dad. He used to play a skins game on Saturday and Sunday morning, small-town stuff with maybe 30 guys. Dad would let me drive off the tee, pick up my ball, take it to his ball and let me hit from there, then chip and putt around the green. The grandson of the guy who owned the course was the same age as me — he actually owns the course now. As I got a bit older, he and I would play chipping and putting games and hit balls at the range. So, I had someone challenging me to get better.

When did you begin playing junior tournaments?

When I was about 12. In Indiana, there was a tour sponsored by Pepsi, and it was broken up into age groups named after pop brands — the Pepsi Tour, the Mountain Dew Tour. There was one summer I won every event I played in, and that was the year (2010) I qualified for the U.S. Junior Am and the Junior PGA.

What were those experiences like?

The Junior PGA was at Sycamore Hills in Fort Wayne, 30 minutes from where I lived. The first round I was nervous and played absolutely horrendously — I think I shot 85. Justin Thomas set the course record that day with 65. The next day got rained out, and me and Dad went to the driving range and got my swing straightened out. I shot even-par 72 the second round, which wasn’t good enough to make the cut but at least I redeemed myself. At the Junior Am at Egypt Valley in Michigan, I shot, like, mid-to-upper 70s both rounds and missed making the cut for match play by a few strokes.

And you’re doing this while becoming one of the nation’s best junior bowlers. In 2011, you made Junior Team USA — and as a teenager made it through qualifying at bowling’s U.S. Open, finishing 20th. When did you finally decide to pick bowling over golf?

When I decided that I wasn’t good enough to play golf. I played golf at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne (now Purdue Fort Wayne), a D1 school. I went for three semesters. I wasn’t seeing the results that I thought I should see. I hated school and just didn’t want to do it anymore. My parents owned a bowling center my whole life, and they haven’t been well off, so I always worked a lot at the center, too. I wasn’t living on campus, I was commuting an hour back and forth to school, trying to work every day — it was maybe a little too much for me to handle. I decided to try a different path. I knew I was always really good at bowling. I got my PBA card in October of 2012, and here we are.

Do you feel like there’s a lot of overlap between the sports in terms of technique?

There are a ton of parallels. I’m not a big guy — 5-foot-8, 150 pounds, but I’m pretty powerful in each sport. My swing path goes out-to-in on the backswing in each. If you look closely at my footwork in bowling, when I get to the [foul] line, you’ll sometimes see my heel coming off the ground. That’s using the ground as leverage, just like a golfer does. They load up the left knee, and it straightens as they turn through the ball, and sometimes that left heel is coming off the ground. Then there’s the old term: “Wait on it.” If you’re trying to make things happen too early in your swing, it throws your timing off and you get herky-jerky.

How about the mental side? A lot of “perfect” shots in bowling don’t produce strikes. It seems like dealing with bad breaks, or what feel like bad breaks, is critical.

In golf, at least in stroke play, you’re really playing against the course. In bowling, you’re bowling against the lane conditions. The guys who can overcome, who don’t overthink things and play what’s in front of them, they’re the ones you see on TV week in and week out. In golf and in bowling, it’s one shot at a time. Because you can’t change what already happened, and you can only control what’s about to happen. And that’s it.

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Bowling and golf are both parallel-play sports — you’re competing alongside someone but can’t influence what they do. How do you handle that? 

I’m just out there trying to do the best I can. I pay attention to what the other guys are doing in that we’re always moving lanes, changing bowling balls because of the conditions. If someone is bowling really well, I might look at what kind of ball they’re using, where they’re standing to start, the line they’re playing, trying to get a better visual that might help me. It’s not like I’m sitting in the back rooting someone else on or yelling for them to get a split. If someone makes a split, yeah, I’ll give him a high-five, or if he bowls a 300 game, it’s like, “Good job — happy for ya.” It’s probably the same way on the PGA Tour. You’re out there doing your job. If someone does something cool, you give ’em a thumbs-up. Throughout normal play, though, it’s pretty much business.

One difference, sadly, is the amount of money in pro golf vs. pro bowling. Do you ever think about that?

All the time, because I did play golf and still always watch it. I won five times (including two majors) in 2023. I bowled extremely well — and I was $40,000 from making half a million dollars. So, if you get to a high level, you can be, not rich, but definitely not poor. But would it be nice to make those million-dollar paychecks? Absolutely. If bowling was making what golf made, I would’ve earned 15 or 20 million dollars before the FedEx Cup. It’s, like, dang, if we had bowling for, you know, half a million or even a million dollars in major championships, that revolutionizes the sport and takes it to a different level. I know that the people in charge of bowling are doing their best. It’s always a work in progress.

Not to romanticize it, but PBA pros will often caravan from event to event, share hotel rooms — it sounds like the PGA Tour back in the ’40s and ’50s. Does that create more camaraderie than today’s golfers’ private jets and five-star hotels?

I would say so. We spend more time with each other than we do with our families. I’m gone 200 days a year. There’s a bunch of my buddies that are always getting dinner when we’re done, going for lunch, having a few beers, hanging out. It is fun, like having a family away from home. I did start staying by myself in rooms a bit more recently. I’ve got to the point in my career where I don’t have to share a room with someone to save a bit of money every week.

Fair to say the average person doesn’t understand how hard both sports are at the top level — the old “they’re not real athletes” or “there’s a guy at our club who shoots par all the time….”

I don’t think people understand at all. The misperception goes with the fact that you can play both sports, and play them well, your whole life — and you can eat and drink while you do it. And in bowling, the ball comes back to you, and in golf someone’s carrying your clubs. They don’t understand the preparation that it takes — gym time, practice, eating right, and everything that goes into being successful.

On the PBA Tour, you’re often bowling on oil patterns as difficult as U.S. Open golf conditions. As in golf, the precision needed is unreal.

On these harder patterns, we’ve got one, maybe two boards to hit — so you’re talking about 1-2 inches. Plus, you need the right speed, the right rev rate, the right rotation. Just like in golf — How much spin do I want? Draw or cut? Is this an 80 percent shot? — all these things get calculated into what you do. What makes both sports so great is that you are in control of so much but also in control of so little at the same time.