Wayne County native is one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time
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When Doug Kent joined the Professional Bowlers Association Tour in 1988, there was just one thing that surprised the Macedon native.
“I thought it would be a little tougher,” he told a Rochester reporter that August.
More likely he was just a better bowler than he’d realized.
Kent was holding his own with the world’s top bowlers right from the get-go. His first tournament win came at the USBC Masters in Toledo in 1991. It was the first of four majors he would win in a career that spanned more than 20 seasons on the PBA Tour.
Kent was probably at his best during the 2006-07 season, when he captured the USBC Masters and PBA World Championship — becoming just the ninth player in history to win two majors in a season. He established career highs for average (222.43) and earnings ($200,530) and was voted PBA Player of the Year.
Although he had some impressive peaks, the hallmark of his career was his consistency from week-to-week. Over his final seven full seasons, he cashed in an astonishing 130 of 133 events.
"I worked on my game for years and years so I always had a chance to win on different lane conditions," Kent said in a 2013 interview. "I can't say I was a master at any one but very competitive on all of them. I never wanted to be one dimensional, just versatile."
His career totals are undeniably impressive: Kent won 10 tournaments; cashed in 344 out of 455 events (75 percent); made 37 televised finals; rolled 31 perfect games; and earned approximately $1.51 million in prize money.
Those numbers made him worthy of the sport’s highest accolades. Kent was named one of the PBA's 50 greatest players of all-time in 2008, and he was inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame in 2013.
Although he retired from full-time play in 2010, Kent continued to appear in PBA Tour events occasionally through 2019.
Kent lettered in golf and baseball at Palmyra-Macedon High School, which didn’t have a bowling team. Instead, he competed in men’s leagues, averaging close to 200.
He has been the owner/operator of Doug Kent's Rose Bowl Lanes in Newark since 1999. He lives in Newark with his wife and two children.
Sean Lahman is a former investigative reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle and served as an editor of a number of best-selling sports encyclopedias — including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball and The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia.
This story was originally published in July 2016.