On a Wednesday afternoon in mid-April, the greatest bowler in the world, perhaps in the history of the sport, sat in a booth in a Bowlero in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a cold wind lashing outside, and pondered how it had all gone wrong. Jason Belmonte was a study in black--black parka, black Jordans, black beard--and his mood was no less dark. He was competing at the World Series of Bowling, one of the sport's major championships, which features three different singles tournaments within a larger one: four chances to win a title on national television. Through 60 games over six days, Belmonte had failed to make any of the first three finals, each of which featured five bowlers. "I can't remember another World Series where I didn't make a top five," he said. The breaks just hadn't gone his way: "A pin would wobble, and it stood, whereas in other weeks it fell."

Hope remained, however slim. He had snagged the 12th and final qualifying spot for the match-play round, to determine which five bowlers would make the last and most important show: the one that would crown the world champion. He would need a run of sustained brilliance, one verging on statistical impossibility, and could only hope that no one else would mount a similar charge.

For nearly every other bowling mortal, the idea of a comeback would have been an exercise in self-delusion. But Belmonte, 39, has never conformed to expectations. When he first alighted on the scene, Belmo, as he's known to his fans, resembled an alien species: one that bowled with two hands. And not some granny shot, to be clear, but a kickass power move in which he uses two fingers (and no thumb) on his right hand, palms the front of the ball with his left, and then, on his approach, which is marked by a distinctive shuffle step, rocks the ball back before launching it with a liquid, athletic whip, his delivery producing an eye-popping hook, his ball striking the pins like a mini mortar explosion. Not everyone welcomed his arrival. He's been called a cheat, told to go back to his native Australia; a PBA Hall of Famer once called the two-hander a "cancer to an already diseased sport."

But Belmonte never cowered in the face of the criticism, never deviated from his approach, and has now inspired a rising generation of bowlers to emulate his game. Today, a growing faction of two-handers headline the PBA Tour, some of them major winners, with even more rising in the youth ranks: kids who want to hook it like Belmo, who want to send the pins into concussion protocol, as the announcers might say on a Fox telecast. Even Walter Ray Williams, Jr., whose 47 career titles are the most in PBA Tour history, now dabbles in the two-hander on the senior tour.