PBA Tour champion A.J. Chapman averaged 252 to lead Saturday’s qualifying as plus 46 made the cut and plus 35 cashed at the 2026 GIBA 11thFrame.com Open at Cherry Lanes inside the Diamond Jo Casino building in Dubuque, Iowa.

The 156 players bowled six games with the top 48 advancing to Sunday’s competition and four additional players cashing.

Chapman, who won the 2026 PBA Roth/Holman Doubles with Zach Wilkins in April for his first PBA Tour title, started the day with a 10-bagger and finished with 1,512.

Brett Biondo was second at 1,483, followed by Kendric Siders with 1,445, Raiden Nakagawa 1,418, and Jorge Rodriguez 1,412, 18 pins ahead of Landin Jordan and Jerry Marrs.

After a wild final game of C squad that saw the cut number jump 11 pins, Evan Flath was the last advancer in 48^th with 1,246.

The four cashers were Wyatt Honecker with 1,245, Ryan Powers 1,239, Jeff Johnson 1,238, and Jim Schroeder and Josh Kennedy 1,235 each.

Two left-handers made the cut: Brandon Kreyer tied for 32^nd at 1,287 and Payton Nabak 35^th with 1,282.

In 2025, the cut was 1,297 and last cash was 1,287.

In 2024, the cut was 1,292 and last cash was 1,284.

In 2023, the cut was 1,229 and last cash 1,215.

In 2022, the cut was 1,252 and last cash 1,242.

USBC lane pattern designer Nick Hoagland gave us a new lane pattern for this year’s tournament with the goal of bringing scores down a bit, which is what many players told me they wanted.

I earned Hoagland’s services a few years ago by making a donation to the Make-A-Wish charity tied to the huge Hoosier Classic college tourney H2M Management runs in Indianapolis. (That was an offer he made to anyone and I continue to donate annually.)

Hoagland delivered a pattern that is similar to lane pattern 4 from the 2026 U.S. Open and the 2015 U.S. Open. It is 46 feet and features 39.39 mL of Brunswick Control oil with main ratios of 1.25-1 on the left side and 1.34-1 on the right side. Almost all of the oil is applied in the first 37 feet. The PDF of the pattern is attached to this story.

The pattern from 2022-25 was 37 feet with 24.63 mL of oil and pattern ratios by volume of 1.11-1 on the left and 1.66-1 on the right.

The idea was that the right side would play a little tougher, which also would give lefties a better chance than they had the last couple of years.

However, the plethora of high-rev right-handers using rough surface balls were able to blow the right side open quickly. The nearly 20-year-old lanes at Cherry also probably contribute to this with significantly more friction on the right than the left from the years or play.

I’ll say again something I’ve written and said numerous times: the margin between lefty dominance and shutout, and excessive softness and brutality is smaller now than it ever has been in bowling history. Equity between sides and styles and a middle ground in scoring has never been harder for a lane pattern designer to find.

The huge challenge for the 11thFrame.com Open is finding something that holds up on the right side for the 12 games on Sunday without having players ending up lofting the left guttercap as happened in 2014. That generally means a pattern that plays from the outside, but it’s very hard to use such a pattern without having lefties dominate. Compensating for that domination can easily shut them out.

The one thing I promise is transparency in what we put out and the reasoning that goes into it — I would not allow my name and brand to be part of any tournament that didn’t offer transparency.

In 2022, no left-handers were close to making the stepladder finals. In 2023, Cam Crowe finished seventh and Nate Stubler ninth for the top left-handed finishes. In 2024, Crowe won and five left-handers made the cut. In 2025, three lefties made the cut and they finished 13^th (Kreyer), 17^th (Crowe), and 47^th (Trenton Holz).

Why the differences in left-hander performance and cut and cash numbers with the same lane pattern being used? Different batches of oil or types of oil? Lane play choices? I believe scores went up because so many players bowl the tournament every year and they came in knowing pretty much what they had to do.

I don’t think there is a way to definitively answer the left-handed performance question. I just know we like that left-handers have not been shut out the last two years, but also have not dominated, while the scoring pace has been reasonable, if a bit higher than many players told me they prefer when I asked last year.

I am no lane pattern expert, but we likely will look to make the left a bit softer next year and hopefully that can be done without creating another year of left-handed dominance as has happened a couple of times. Lefties have won five of the 13 11thFrame.com Opens so overall they have won more than their percentage of the field.

One thing Kreyer and Nabak may have in their favor Sunday is with 12 games the right side may get tricky later in the day and they may be able to make late run up the standings.

Sunday’s innovative format that comes from the fertile mind of Mike Flanagan features 12 games of bowling starting at 9 a.m. with bonus pins based on score from highest to lowest. For example, if 48 advance to Sunday in each game the highest scorer will get 48 bonus pins, the second-highest scorer 47 pins, so on down to 1 bonus pin for the lowest score each game. Whatever number of finalists there are, that number of bonus pins will go to the high scorer down to 1 pin for the lowest score each game.

Yes, it’s not head-to-head; instead, it’s all-against-one. The idea is to reward the consistently solid bowler and not the one who may bowl the right people at the right time. And everyone who makes the cut gets to bowl all of Sunday's games.

Results are being posted here. For Sunday, this Google doc provides game-by-game scoring and standings.

The top five after 18 games with bonus pins make the stepladder finals, which will be contested on fresh oil and air around 3:45 p.m. to a little later.

All of the competition is being webcast by Flanagan’s InsideBowling.com at its YouTube channel.

Flanagan interviewed A squad leader Jace Meyer during B squad, he interviewed B squad leader Biondo during C squad, and he interviewed Chapman right after C squad finished at the end of the C squad archive.

Here is my preview of the 11thFrame.com Open that includes details on what changed this year.

GIBA administrator Joe Engelkes said in an email to GIBA players on July 2 that long-time sponsor the Dubuque Regional Sports Commission changed its rules so it now allows events to request funding only every third year. That means GIBA wasn’t even able to request funding for the 2026 11thFrame.com Open and also won’t be able to in 2027.

Fortunately, Joe was able to come up with a plan that maintains the prize fund and it includes an entry fee hike from $160 to $170 (matching the Ebonite Classics), and me hiking my sponsorship from $400 to $500 and moving it from slot cards for non-cashers to the prize fund, as well as some additional sponsorship and administrative adjustments.

With the usual full field of 156 players, first through fifth this year again will be $2,800, $2,300, $1,800, $1,400 and $1,100, and the rest of the prize fund will be essentially the same.

Engelkes said there is more than $3,000 in added money from GIBA sponsor Ebonite and returning tournament sponsors Diamond Jo Casino, Cherry Lanes, Brandon Steen/The Steen Team, IAMBowling, Kwik Star/Kwik Trip, and 11thFrame.com. 

Matt McNiel won in 2012, Matt Gasn in 2014, McNiel again in 2015, Jay Watts in 2016, Adam Morse in 2017, Andy Mills in 2018, Nate Stubler in 2019, Jerry Marrs in 2020, Stubler again in 2021, Nick Pate in 2022, Dakota Solonka in 2023, Crowe in 2024. and David Cole II in 2025. (No tournament was held in 2013.)