This bowling superstar can probably also beat you at golf

EJ Tackett has won seven bowling majors — and carries a better-than-scratch golf handicap. Jeff Haynes/USGA This interview was first published in Golf Journal , a quarterly print publication exclusively for USGA Members. To be among the first to receive Golf Journal and to learn how you can ensure a strong future for the game, become a USGA Member today .

*** Only six men — Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy — have won golf’s career Grand Slam. EJ Tackett became just the ninth to capture the Professional Bowlers Association’s equivalent, the Triple Crown, at the 2023 U. S.

Open in his home state of Indiana. Needing a strike and eight pins in the last frame to defeat his rival, friend and golf buddy Kyle Troup, Tackett “shoed up and stepped up,” as they say on the lanes, crushing the pocket twice for strikes to fulfill his childhood dream. Well, one of his childhood dreams — it could have been a U.

S. Open golf triumph, too. Tackett, now 33 and starring alongside Troup in HBO Max’s new documentary series, “Born to Bowl,” was an elite junior golfer as well as bowler, competing against the likes of Scottie Scheffler , Jordan Spieth , Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas at the 2010 U.