MOOSE JAW -- Canada will be playing for bronze at the BKT World Men’s Curling Championship.
Scotland’s Bruce Mouat put together a stellar performance against Canada’s Brad Jacobs in the tournament semifinal on Saturday afternoon at Temple Gardens Centre in Moose Jaw, taking a 7-4 victory in front of 4,305 fans.
Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller took a 7-3 win over China’s Xiaoming Xu in the other semifinal, and as a result it’ll be Scotland vs. Switzerland for gold while Canada will take on China for bronze.
The victory was especially impressive for Scotland in that they were coming off an epic 8-7 win over defending champion Niklas Edin of Sweden in their semifinal contest only a couple hours earlier.
Two big wins at the most important time of the tournament, and the 2023 champions are once again going for gold.
“I think it comes down to experience for us, we’ve been in this situation a few times and we’ve always had to battle through,” Mouat said. “We’ve maybe not had our best week, but we’ve definitely had our best games against Sweden and Canada. We’ve worked really hard and it’s great to be going for gold.”
While Canada had been able to put pressure on their opponents all week while putting together their 11-1 record, the shoe was on the other foot in the semifinal. Even with the hammer, Jacobs was forced to take one when they had a chance, and their only deuce of the game came on a brilliant touch double by the Canada skip that nearly brought the house down at Temple Gardens Centre.
Conversely, Scotland picked up deuces and the second and sixth ends and took one in eight to lead 5-4 coming home.
The final end came down to an angle raise triple takeout for Jacobs that would have scored three and secured the win, but he’d only get one and Scotland had the win.
Asked after the contest if he’d considered drawing for one and going to extras, Jacobs said he was all about going for the victory.
“I think we know the odds are stacked against us playing Scotland in an extra end, especially when (Scotland second) Bobby Lammie makes every double-peel in the world,” Jacobs said. “He's very, very good at that. So, yeah, hey, we were close. We fought and battled all the way until the end.”
With the way things turned out, Jacobs felt his crew of third Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant and lead Ben Hebert were going to need to be exceptionally sharp, and even though they curled 93 per cent as a unit, the big shots just weren’t regularly there when they needed them.
“We weren't our sharpest. We weren't our best. I think our best up against that team and their best, I do think we win, but that wasn't what we had today,” Jacobs said. “They were stronger than us especially the first six or seven ends. We battled. We tried. They were just better than us today.”
Canada isn’t done just yet. They’ll be back on the ice on Sunday morning in the bronze medal game against China’s Xu after Switzerland’s Schwaller put together their impressive win in the other semifinal game.
“Make no mistake, we're going to try to fight hard tomorrow against China,” Jacobs said. “We want to get ourselves on the podium and hold our heads high and win our last game here. And we're going to fight hard for Canada to do that.”
Meanwhile, Mouat, third Grant Hardie, second Lammie and lead Hammy McMillan are naturally excited to be going for gold against Schwaller, third Benoit Schwarz-Van Berkel, second Sven Michel and lead Pablo Lachat-Couchepin.
“We’re really looking forward to playing against Switzerland, we know them pretty well and they’re really good guys,” Mouat said. “So we’re going to work very hard and hopefully we’ll have another game like we had here today.”
The bronze medal game will take place at 9 a.m. at Temple Gardens Centre, followed by the gold medal championship final at 3 p.m.
