Redemption in Allen Park: EJ Tackett Wins a Historic Fourth Straight PBA World Championship

By Brian Halstrom, BowlersMart Editorial Team | Published June 2026

Two months ago, on the exact lanes where he would eventually make history, the best bowler in the world walked off as a runner-up.

In late March, EJ Tackett stood as the top seed at the USBC Masters inside Strobl Arena at AMF Thunderbowl Lanes in Allen Park, Michigan, one victory away from completing the career Grand Slam. He lost the title match to Boog Krol by a single pin, 196 to 195. One pin stood between Tackett and a place no active player has reached, on the very floor he would have to walk back onto.

On June 13, 2026, he walked back onto it. This time he left no room for heartbreak, and he authored a different kind of history entirely.

Four Straight, and a First in PBA History

Tackett defeated Zach Wilkins 188-181 to win the AMF PBA World Championship for the fourth consecutive year, becoming the first player in the history of the Professional Bowlers Association to win the same title event four years in a row. It was the 28th PBA Tour title of his career and his eighth major championship.

“I can’t even put it into words what this feels like right now,” Tackett said, “to do something that no one else has ever done in the history of our sport.”

The Best Bowler in the World, Without a Trophy

What makes the four-peat stranger, and a little more human, is how the rest of 2026 had gone for Tackett. By every measure of consistency he had been the dominant bowler on tour all season. He led the PBA in competition points by a wide margin, the kind of gap that usually comes with a shelf full of new hardware. He kept earning the top seed. He kept giving himself the chance.

And he kept coming up just short. The Masters loss to Krol was the cruelest of the near misses, but it was not the only one. Heading into the World Championship, the most prolific winner of his generation had not won a single title in 2026. The points leader, the three-time defending world champion, the man the entire field measures itself against, was somehow still waiting for his first win of the year.

The Masters had stung the most because of what was on the line. That title match was Tackett’s bid to complete the PBA Grand Slam. He already owned the U.S. Open, the PBA World Championship and the PBA Tournament of Champions, and only the Masters had eluded him. Krol’s single pin pushed the Slam another year down the road. It was not for lack of form, either. Across 18 match play games at that Masters, Tackett averaged 258.39, a number that would lap most fields. It simply was not quite enough on the one night it mattered most.

So when the breakthrough finally came, it did not come quietly. It came on the biggest stage the tour offers, and it came with a record attached.

66 Games, Nine Survivors, One Champion

The road to the title match was a grind. Players bowled 66 games of qualifying during the PBA World Series of Bowling XVII, with only nine advancing to the stepladder finals. Tackett bowled his way to the top seed and the wait that comes with it, while Wilkins, part of the wave of young power players reshaping the tour, climbed the ladder to earn his shot at the champion.

The World Series of Bowling is the tour’s most punishing stretch, a series of grueling oil-pattern tournaments stacked one on top of another, with the World Championship standings built from cumulative pinfall across the entire block. Surviving 66 games to reach the final nine is less about one hot night and more about refusing to have a bad one for weeks. That format rewards exactly what Tackett does better than anyone: show up every block and never beat himself.

The championship match was the tight, nervy kind that majors tend to produce. Neither bowler ran away with it. In the end Tackett did what he has done on this stage more than anyone alive, closing the door 188-181 and lifting the trophy that has now belonged to him for four straight years. The title was worth $100,000, with Wilkins earning $60,000 for second.

A Place Among the All-Time Greats

The four-peat is the headline, but it sits on top of one of the most decorated runs in modern bowling. Tackett has won the PBA World Championship in 2023, 2024, 2025 and now 2026. He is a four-time Chris Schenkel PBA Player of the Year (2016, 2023, 2024, 2025), and in 2025 he became just the fifth player ever to win three straight Player of the Year honors. In 2023 he became the ninth player to capture the PBA’s Triple Crown. In 2024 he set the record for most consecutive championship-round appearances with six.

The numbers behind the trophies are just as serious. A native of Bluffton, Indiana, Tackett is 33 years old and has been a force since joining the PBA in 2012. His 28 titles break down into 20 standard titles and eight majors, and his career earnings now sit north of $2.38 million. He has represented Team USA six times and owns four international medals. The four-peat does not stand alone. It is the capstone, for now, on a career that already belongs in the conversation with the best to ever play.

To put four in a row in perspective, the PBA has crowned champions for more than half a century, through eras defined by legends like Earl Anthony, Walter Ray Williams Jr. and Pete Weber. Dozens of Hall of Famers have chased this exact trophy. None of them, in all that history, ever won a single PBA title event four years in a row. Tackett just did.

It is also a marker of where the sport sits right now. The tour gets younger and more athletic every season, stocked with players like Wilkins and Krol who arrive with enormous revolutions and no fear of the moment. Krol already proved he could beat Tackett on the biggest stage. Wilkins earned his way to the title match and pushed him to the wire. And still, when the lights were brightest, the 33-year-old from Indiana was the last one standing. The next generation has arrived. For now, it still runs through EJ Tackett.

The Gear Behind the Run

What Comes Next

For most players a fourth straight world title would be the season’s defining goal. For Tackett, one prize is still missing. The career Grand Slam, the one the Masters denied him by a single pin, remains out there waiting. If 2026 has proven anything, it is that the gap between Tackett and the rest of the tour is real, and that the only thing standing between him and history has often been the thinnest of margins.

He erased one of those margins in Allen Park. He turned a one-pin heartbreak into the most unprecedented championship run his sport has ever seen, on the same lanes, two months later. The Grand Slam can wait. For one night, four in a row was more than enough.