JUPITER, Fla. – Kris Prather was able to slow down, take his time and put up just enough strikes in the final round to win the 2020 PBA Strike Derby on national television Saturday night.

Prather, who sat and watched Anthony Simonsen post a total of six strikes in two minutes, needed just seven to win the $25,000 top prize and that’s exactly what he did at Bowlero Jupiter.

Throughout the night, eight of the PBA Tour’s biggest stars had two minutes in each round to throw as many strikes as possible. The night started with a seeding round before heading into a single-elimination bracket.

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The special made-for-television event was an opportunity for the PBA to appeal to the masses in a prime time, network TV time slot on FOX.

Unofficially on the night 213 strikes were tossed, well over the initial over/under set by FOX Bet of 196.5, as the players showed off their athleticism tossing strikes as quickly as they could. The 213 strikes came on 369 attempts, for an overall strike percentage of 57.72%.

As the event came to the conclusion, Prather watched as Simonsen struggled in the final match. Simonsen got off 19 shots in the two minutes but just six of them struck. That took some of the pressure off Prather.

“I knew if he had 10 or 11 strikes, I was going to be trying to go back and forth as fast as I could,” Prather said. “With how slow you have to throw it to get it to actually hook from that far left, if he would have struck any more than seven or eight, I probably would have struck less than what I did.”

The show began with Sean Rash earning the top seed in the bracket after posting a score of 14 in the seeding round. He was followed by Kyle Troup (12), EJ Tackett (11), Prather (10), Bill O’Neill (9), Simonsen (9), Tommy Jones (9) and Shawn Maldonado (7). All ties were broken by highest string of strikes.

In the first round of the bracket, Rash defeated Maldonado, 10-5 and Troup took down Jones, 12-10. The other two matches finished tied and were decided by the highest string of strikes. Simonsen tied Tackett with 12 but had a five-bagger to Tackett’s four-bagger, while Prather and O’Neill tied at 9 with Prather having a four-to-three edge in strings.

Simonsen defeated Troup, 13-12, in the semifinals, while Prather advanced with an 8-7 win over Rash.

The PBA Strike Derby was the first event back for the PBA since the PBA World Championship show on March 15. The PBA will once again be on FOX (United States) and FloBowling (international) on June 13 at 6 p.m. Eastern for the 2020 PBA Summer Clash.