The PBA50 season may just be getting started, but one of the biggest events of the entire season is already upon us as the PBA50 National Championship starts Tuesday in The Villages, Florida.

One of three majors on the PBA50 Tour this season, the National Championship will set the early stage for the PBA50 Player of the Year race. Fans can watch live exclusively on FloBowling.

Here are a few key points to get you ready for the National Championship:

Boresch is tough to beat in The Villages

Lennie Boresch Jr. loves Spanish Springs Lanes, which may be an understatement. The defending champion has won four PBA50 titles and three of them have come at Spanish Springs.

Last year, Boresch, 57, won his first career PBA50 major when he took down three of the top PBA50 players in the stepladder finals. He started by beating Parker Bohn III, 248-221, and in the semifinal, took down Ron Mohr, 242-232.

In the championship match, Boresch earned the title with a tough 198-192 victory over Norm Duke. He tossed a clutch double in the final frame to secure the victory.

“It’s something you dream about your whole life,” Boresch told the PBA after the win. “To win a major especially against a great player like Norm – it’s something special for sure.”

In 2017, Boresch also won the PBA50 stop in The Villages, taking the Sun Bowl title with a 264-213 win over Bob Learn Jr. He also won the Sun Bowl event in 2012 for his first career PBA50 title.

All the top players will be there

For the second consecutive week, all of the players in the FloBowling PBA50 Power Rankings are in the field as the players are ready to do battle for the season’s first major.

After finishing fifth at last week’s PBA50 Johnny Petraglia BVL Open in Clearwater, Florida, Duke remains the No. 1-ranked player on the senior tour. However, after his victory last week, Walter Ray Williams Jr. is hot on his heels.

With a long format this week (details below), expect the cream to rise to the top as the best players on any tour tend to fare well over the course of more games.

A plethora of PBA Hall of Famers are in the field, including but not limited to Amleto Monacelli, Parker Bohn III, Ron Mohr, Pete Weber and Brian Voss, who made news last week with his comments on two-handed bowling.

The format and lane conditions

The formats on the PBA50 Tour can often be a little confusing as it is designed for maximum fairness between the PBA50 and PBA60 players. This week’s format, however, is as simple as it gets on the PBA50 Tour.

The players are broken up into three squads and all players will bowl three six-game rounds of qualifying starting Tuesday and concluding Thursday.

The first squad each day will bowl on fresh, the second squad on the burn and the third squad on the double burn. Each squad will get one crack at fresh, burn and double burn.

After 18 games of qualifying, the top 32 players advance to two eight-game rounds of match play with all pins carrying over. After 34 total games, the top five will bowl in the stepladder finals on Friday at approximately 7 p.m. Eastern.

The lane condition being used this week is the 44-foot Billy Hardwick pattern, which has 30.04 mL of oil and a ratio of 2.43:1.

How to watch

The only place to watch the PBA50 National Championship is live on FloBowling. Every round of the event from qualifying through the stepladder finals will be broadcast live with archives available immediately after each round ends.

What the schedule looks like

Here’s the schedule for this event, all times listed are Eastern:

Tuesday, April 23
9 a.m. – Qualifying Round 1, Squad A (six games)
1 p.m. – Qualifying Round 1, Squad B (six games)
5 p.m. – Qualifying Round 1, Squad C (six games)

Wednesday, April 24
9 a.m. – Qualifying Round 2, Squad B (six games)
1 p.m. – Qualifying Round 2, Squad C (six games)
5 p.m. – Qualifying Round 2, Squad A (six games)

Thursday, April 25
9 a.m. – Qualifying Round 3, Squad C (six games)
1 p.m. – Qualifying Round 3, Squad A (six games)
5 p.m. – Qualifying Round 3, Squad B (six games)

Friday, April 26
9 a.m. – Match Play Round 1 (eight games)
2 p.m. – Match Play Round 2 (eight games)
7 p.m. – Stepladder Finals