With eight tournaments down and two more to go on the PBA Senior Tour, Lawrence bowler Bob Glass appears to be sitting in an enviable position.

Glass leads the PBA Senior Tour in three categories  average score (220.88), points (11,440) and trips to the championship round (5). And he’s second in money earned with $24,080.

Yet the pressure is on Glass as he bids for a third straight Senior Bowler of the Year title.

“If I don’t win the last two tournaments,” Glass said, “I don’t have a chance.”

Winning out, Glass feels, is the only way he can overcome his failure to capture a single championship at the first eight stops. He did finish second three times and he made those five trips to the championship round, but he faltered in the two major events  the Senior World and the Senior Masters.

“Winning majors,” Glass said, “really trumps everything.”

Mark Roth won the Senior World and the $20,000 first-place check, the largest on the tour. In fact, Roth leads the Senior Tour money list primarily because of that victory. His total winnings are $28,375, or about $4,000 more than second-place Glass.

How Glass could lead the Senior Tour in points and average without winning a single event is a bit of a mystery.

“It is kind of strange, isn’t it?” Glass said. “I guess it’s because even when I bowl bad, I don’t bowl real bad.”

Still, Glass bowled bad enough at the Northern California Open that he failed to advance past the qualifying round for the first time since he joined the Senior Tour full-time in 2000. But he cashed in six of the eight tournaments and, in addition to his three second-place finishes, was fifth at the Detroit Open.

“Three seconds means three times I could have won,” Glass said. “If I win those three, it looks like I had a great pro tour.”

The Senior Tour is currently in a six-week hiatus. It won’t resume until the Hammond, Ind., Open on Aug. 19. Then the Tour will conclude the following week in Jackson, Mich.

In the meantime, Glass is working on strengthening his back and developing familiarity with new balls introduced by Track, his sponsor.

“I’ve changed my routine at the gym and stopped doing some leg exercises. I’m doing more squats to try to help my lower back,” said Glass, who will turn 55 in October.

As far as his equipment goes, Glass says he’ll spend a full day next week at Track headquarters in San Antonio checking out the company’s latest technological advancements in rolling stock.

“Right now Ebonite has a ball called Adrenaline and it’s pretty amazing,” Glass said. “But my company is supposed to have one that’s even better, so I’ll go down and test it. I’m hoping it’s as good as they say it is.”

As good as Glass has been during his three years on the PBA Senior Tour, he knows he’s at an age when physiology will dictate the length of his late-blooming professional bowling career.

“It sort of depends on how long I can hold my body together,” he said.