Anthony Simonsen won the race-to-two-points championship match, 2-1, over Kyle Troup to win the 2021 PBA Tour Finals as Simonsen’s eighth career Guaranteed Rate PBA Tour title. In a rematch of last season’s PBA Tour Finals title match, Simonsen avenged his 2020 loss and claimed his first title since he won twice in 2019.

“I wanted to get out and bowl well,” said Simonsen. “If you bowl well and you lose, it’s a little easier to accept than when you bowl badly and lose. I was able to just bowl today and not have to manipulate everything.”

In the race-to-two points format, Troup took the first game and Simonsen responded with a 279 in game two to force a ninth-and-10th-frame roll-off.

“We’re bowling two games for a reason in this format,” said Simonsen. “I wanted to get myself lined up and find a clear mindset going into the next game. Once I got into a rhythm, it was on from there.”

Simonsen, the higher seed, elected to have Troup start the roll-off. Troup struck. Simonsen spared and then filled the 10th with three strikes, forcing Troup to get two strikes and a single pin to win. Troup struck on his first shot but left a 10 pin on the second shot, giving Simonsen his eighth career title.

“My double in the 10th was huge,” said Simonsen. “Making him have to get up and double on a lane that didn’t seem like any of us were super comfortable on. He made two really good shots, but the 10 pin is hard to knock over.”

Simonsen and Troup made it to the championship match by winning their respective groups during yesterday’s four-game qualifying block, then surviving the group stepladder finals earlier today.

Simonsen led Group 2 into the stepladder, then defeated Kris Prather in a roll-off in the Group 2 final match to advance to the championship against Troup.

Troup qualified as the second seed after four games of qualifying, then defeated Chris Via in a single game and Bill O’Neill in a roll-off to win the Group 1 stepladder and get to the championship match.

In the opening match of the Group 1 stepladder, Chris Via rolled the 32nd televised 300 game in a PBA Tour title event, knocking out two-time PBA Tour Finals champion EJ Tackett. Via, who joined Sean Rash and François Lavoie as the only players in PBA history to roll two televised perfect games in title events, also became the first player ever to bowl two televised perfect games in the same season, having rolled his first during the PBA Players Championship East Region Finals earlier this year. Via received a $10,000 bonus for the feat.