MOOSE JAW -- Scotland is once again on top of the men’s curling world.
Scotland’s Bruce Mouat, third Grant Hardie, second Bobby Lammie and lead Hammy McMillan scored one in the 10th end to take a 5-4 victory over Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller, third Benoit Schwarz-Van Berkel, second Sven Michel and lead Pablo Lachat-Couchepin in the gold medal final on Sunday afternoon at Temple Gardens Centre in Moose Jaw.
The win is the second for Mouat and crew after also winning the title in 2023.
“It’s incredible,” Mouat said shortly after accepting the championship trophy and gold medals. “Both of them are special, but this one was a grind since we didn’t have it all our way this week, so to have this over our shoulders is just incredible.
“It’s so tough now, the first time we played it we came into it and maybe didn’t know what to expect and were 11-1 in the round robin and this time we were 8-4, so it’s such a grind, but I’m so proud of how we stuck in last night and yesterday and today. It was such a good run.”
The round robin wasn’t the best showing for Scotland, as their 8-4 record made them the fourth qualifiers after the round robin. The playoffs were a different story, though, with a quarter-final 8-7 win over defending champion Niklas Edin of Sweden and a 7-4 win over the top team in the round robin in Canada’s Brad Jacobs.
“We figured it out eventually, we had some really bad games throughout the week and we just had to have a discussion within the team, a good debrief, to figure out where we’re at and what we wanted to do,” Mouat said. “We figured out our strategy for the games yesterday and today and we did the exact same in all three games.”
As the score would indicate, the final was a close battle.
Switzerland got on the board first with a single point in the first end, and Scotland went to work trying to set up their deuce from there.
That meant three straight blank ends up to the fifth, when Mouat made a nice double takeout on a pair of Schwaller rocks in the back four foot to score his pair.
Switzerland would get that one right back the next end when Mouat made another double and just missed a triple takeout, but left Schwaller counting one back 12 foot. That would leave Schwarz-Van Berkel with an open hit for two with his final shot, and he’d make it for a 3-2 Switzerland lead through six ends.
Sure enough, Scotland would get that deuce right back -- this time when Mouat made a delicate hit to move around a bunch of stones frozen together in the four foot, sitting two when the dust had cleared.
Scotland did all they could to get the force in the eighth, counting five all over the house at Switzerland’s final stone, and Schwarz Van-Berkel would draw the pin to score one and tie things up with two ends to go.
Mouat faced a pair of stones on edge of the 12 foot with his final rock in nine and made them both go away while rolling the shooter out, and Scotland would have hammer coming home tied up 4-4.
With the way the playoffs had gone for Scotland and crew, that meant only one thing, and after a well-played end by the eventual champs, Mouat would draw full four foot for one and the win.
The final game of the championship drew a total of 4.312 fans, giving a final attendance mark of 77,985 for the week.
