Gary Faulkner Jr.

Gary Faulkner Jr. won his first major PBA title in 2015. He grew up in Whitehaven and Germantown (in and near Memphis, Tennessee) and is a 2009 graduate of Germantown High School. He learned to bowl at Winchester Bowl and the Strike Zone Bowling Lanes in Memphis, where he earned the nickname “300”. His father, Gary Faulkner Sr., is pastor at Cummings Street Missionary Baptist Church in Southeast Memphis.

Faulkner joined the PBA in 2013, and, in his first professional television appearance, in 2015 he won a major title at the Rolltech PBA World Championship. In 2016 he finished ninth in the PBA Xtra Frame Lubbock Sports Open.

Faulkner became the second PBA Tour African-American champion, after now-retired tour winner George Branham III. In recognition, Tennessee Representative Steve Cohen invited Faulkner to bowl at the White House, where on March 4, 2016 he bowled on the lanes beneath the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building with some members of his family, of Cohen's staff, of White House staff, and Cohen himself.