Kyle Troup Wins PBA Wolf Open, Joins Father Guppy as PBA Tour Champions

bowlingball.com 7/31/2015

In his f irst television appearance, two-handed competitor Kyle Troup of Taylorsville, N.C., sporting a throwback Afro hairdo and Partridge Family bus-styled attire, won the PBA Wolf Open in the opening event of the Oklahoma's Grand Casino Hotel & Resort PBA Summer Swing.

The first of five Summer Swing events conducted at the Grand Event Center aired on CBS Sports Network.

Proving the adage that the apple doesn't fall from the tree, the son of equally-flamboyant eight-time Tour winner Guppy Troup, defeated 2014 PBA Rookie of the Year Marshall Kent, 229-179, in a championship match that featured two of PBA's rising stars. In winning, Troup and his dad became the fourth father-son tandem in PBA history to win Tour titles.

"This is an unbelievable feeling," said the 23 year-old Troup. "It's going to take a while for me to realize it. "It's a dream come true and it makes it all that much better that my family was able to be here to be a part of it."

Troup, who qualified third for the stepladder finals conducted on specially-installed lanes in the Grand Event Center, was using an older technology urethane ball to attack the 32-foot Wolf lane condition, the shortest of the PBA's "animal pattern" lane conditions.

"Anytime I can play the gutter and use urethane that's a game I like to play," Troup said. "I could see the other guys were having some trouble dealing with the transition and eventually it was going to get ugly, so I had confidence that using urethane and playing outside would be a good combination to have to deal with that. Today straighter is greater was the rule of the day."

After Troup qualified for the finals earlier in the week at the nearby FireLake Bowling Center, Guppy, Kyle's mother Sherri and brother Tyler were able to fly in from North Carolina to watch the finals telecast.

The win made the Troup's the fourth father and son to record a PBA Tour win. Eugene and Don McCune, Pete and Dick Weber, and Jimmy and Don Johnson were the previous father-son combinations to win titles.

That's the toughest match I've ever been a part of and I wasn't even bowling in it," Guppy Troup said. "I was hanging on every shot, so I'm a wreck right now. Maybe I'll be less nervous the next time he makes a show but right now I'm just beside myself - it's awesome."

The stepladder began with two-time Tour winner Andres Gomez of Colombia defeating 15-time Tour winner Tommy Jones of Simpsonville, S.C., in the opening match, 215-195. Troup then beat Gomez in the second match, 203-163, to advance to the semifinal where he beat No. 2 qualifier five-time Tour winner Bill O'Neill, 202-188, to advance to the title match against Kent.

Kent was trying to win his second Tour title after winning the Kingdom International Open in Saudi Arabia in his rookie season. With his win, Troup automatically qualified for the Grand Casino Resort King of the Swing special event that will close the Summer Swing.

Article was posted with permission from Stars & Strikes, America's Bowling Newsmagazine. www.starsandstrikesbowling.com