PWBA Bowling Tour: 2021 season

The 2021 Professional Women's Bowling Association (PWBA) Tour season had a total of 20 title events scheduled, the most since the 2001 PWBA season.^[1] Overall, the season had 16 standard singles title events, three major tournaments (USBC Queens, U.S. Women's Open and PWBA Tour Championship), and the Striking Against Breast Cancer Mixed Doubles tournament (a crossover event with the PBA Tour). All singles events were broadcast on BowlTV, the USBC’s YouTube channel, except for the season-ending PWBA Tour Championship, which was broadcast on CBS Sports Network.

The season kicked off January 19, 2021 in Arlington, Texas with the first of three Classic Series events. Each Classic Series event includes three title tournaments contested in the same location over an eight-day span. The first two tournaments in a Classic Series stop have fully open fields, while the third tournament starts with only the top 24 players in pinfall from the qualifying rounds of the first two tournaments.^[2]

On April 29, the PBA announced it was adding an all-women's competition to its King of the Lanes event, which was broadcast live on FS1 on June 15 and 16. (In the 2020 PBA King of the Lanes, two females – Clara Guerrero and Gazmine Mason – participated against an otherwise all-male field.) The King of the Lanes: Empress Edition is a "last person standing" format, where two challengers face each other for a chance to dethrone the reigning Empress over the course of five rounds. Kelly Kulick was chosen as the initial Empress. Challengers included: Clara Guerrero, Daria Pajak, Danielle McEwan, Maria José Rodriguez, Missy Parkin, Diana Zavjalova, Liz Johnson, Ashly Galante, Stefanie Johnson and Verity Crawley.^[3]