by Jerry Schneider

Making a late charge out of 11th place after the first six games of qualifying, Bill O’Neill of Langhorne, Pa., captured the top berth for Tuesday’s CBS Sports Network telecast of the Professional Bowlers Association’s Badger Open from the Grand Casino Hotel and Resort complex.

Only 18 pins separated the top five players who qualified for the finals of the third of five events in Oklahoma’s Grand Casino Resort PBA Summer Swing. The Badger finals will air Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET. Pre- and post-game shows will be offered online on PBA’s Xtra Frame bowling channel and its YouTube page.

O’Neill, a four-time PBA Tour champion, averaged 230.3 to finish the 12-game Badger Open qualifying to earn the top spot in the stepladder finals by two pins over PBA Hall of Famer and 37-time champion Pete Weber of St. Ann, Mo.

The opening match will feature two-handed player Brian Valenta of Lockport, Ill., making his first Tour telecast, against 13-time Tour winner Mika Koivuniemi of Hartland, Mich. Valenta’s previous high finish was fifth in the 2011 Chameleon Championship and Koivuniemi’s last Tour win came in the Brunswick Ballmaster Open in his native Finland in January of 2013.

The winner of match one will meet No. 3 qualifier Marshall Kent of Yakima, Wash., a PBA rookie who joined the PBA the week before the Summer Swing started. The two-time Collegiate Bowler of the Year qualified one pin behind Weber. Prior to joining the PBA, Kent finished fourth in the 2013 U.S. Open, second in the 2013 Scorpion Championship during PBA World Series of Bowling V and he won the 2014 Brunswick Euro Challenge – all while bowling as an amateur.

The winner of the second match will meet Weber, whose last win came in the 2013 Barbasol PBA Tournament of Champions, in the semifinal match. That winner will take on O’Neill, whose last Tour win came in the 2012 Cheetah Championship, for the title and a berth in the end-of-series Oklahoma’s Grand Casino King of the Swing.

The PBA Summer Swing continues on the CBS Sports Network with the Oklahoma Open Tuesday, June 24 at 7 p.m. ET, and the series will conclude with the King of the Swing special event on Tuesday, July 1 at 7 p.m. ET.

CBS Sports Network is available across the country through local cable, video and telco providers and via satellite on DirecTV Channel 221 and Dish Network Channel 158. For more information, including a full programming schedule and how to get CBS Sports Network, go to www.cbssportsnetwork.com.

Archived CBS Sports Network telecasts of Summer Swing events will also be available on Xtra Frame seven days after their original air date.