Pro tour qualifiers became a fact of life on the PBA Tour soon after the number of bowlers wanting to enter tournaments exceeded the size of the field. That started happening in the 1970s and after a period of first come-first served entries with some semi-official exemptions for stars, a formal system that included PTQs began in 1976 for a handful of winter events, bowling historian Eric Hartman said after researching the topic for 11thFrame.com. He sent some pictures of newspaper stories from...