National Post (National Edition)
Jacobs rink still rocking together
Brad Jacobs and his teammates had a very difficult decision to make about their future earlier this year and in the end they chose to stay the course.
On Sunday in Thunder Bay, it sure looked like they made the right move.
The Jacobs foursome, from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., beat Edmonton’s Brendan Bottcher in the final of the Grand Slam of Curling’s Tour Challenge (Tier 1).
It was the team’s first Grand Slam title in 18 months and first World Curling Tour win in over a year.
“It was very satisfying and it felt very well deserved,” Jacobs said in a telephone interview this week.
“I think the pressure would have mounted. If we didn’t win soon we may have been second-guessing our decision. I do think that winning nice and early in the year like that in a big event does give us a lot of confidence going forward and we did make the right decision. We can still play and compete at a very high level.”
Jacobs and his teammates Ryan Fry, E.J. Harnden and Ryan Harnden are no strangers to curling success. They won the 2014 Olympic gold medal in Sochi after running the table at the 2013 Olympic trials in Winnipeg.
They also won the 2013 Brier and took silver at the world championship.
All that is fairly far in the past, however, and after failing to qualify for the 2018 Olympics, the team had to take a long look in the mirror.
“We wanted to make sure that whatever decision we made was the right decision, so we took our time and really talked it through, weighed out the pros and cons,”jacobs said. “we had a lot of teams changing players, certain guys stepping away from the game, but we decided that staying together was the best option for all four of us.
“Everything was on hold until our team made our decision to stay together and then we saw a lot of other teams come together. It said something to us that a lot of teams were waiting to see what we did.”
The Jacobs foursome has now been together for seven years, which is not something many other men’s teams can say right now. When Mike Mcewen broke up his Winnipeg team that had been together 11 years, it moved the Jacobs foursome near the top of the longevity list among elite men’s teams.
“If we can run this out for another four, that will be 11 seasons and something to be very proud of,” Jacobs said.
However, he said at this point the team is not even thinking about the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
“It’s pointless to look that far ahead,” he said. “If anything, it just makes the pressure mount more and more as the Olympic Trials approach. I think we’ve been guilty of looking at it that way a little bit in the past.
“Going into the last Trials I think we put that on way too much of a pedestal. We know what the event entails, but it can be detrimental to performance if you look too far ahead like that. So we’re really trying to take everything one season at a time and not build up to anything other than the one thing that we’re gonna be focused on more than anything this year, and that’s the Brier.”
Jacobs has represented Northern Ontario at 10 Briers and if he can qualify again for this year’s event in Brandon, Man., he’ll surely be among the favourites, especially if his team’s performance in the Tour Challenge is taken into account.
Jacobs went 3-1 in the round robin, then beat 2018 Olympic champion John Shuster of the United States in the quarter-final and Olympian Peter de Cruz of Switzerland in the semifinal.
In the final, Jacobs picked up the 6-5 win by throwing an in-turn tap-back through a port to score two in the eighth and final end, much to the delight of the Northern Ontario fans in Thunder Bay.
“It was a little bit like being at home,” Jacobs said. “To hear the crowd erupt definitely made our last shot feel like everyone was pulling for us.”
Given the strength of the field at the Grand Slams, a win at an event like the Tour Challenge can go a long way toward setting a team on the right path for a season.
“They’re really difficult,” Jacobs said after winning his fourth Grand Slam title.
“It’s a short round robin and if you lose your first game, you can already be behind the 8-ball. The competition is as good as it gets so anytime you have an opportunity to win one, it’s a great feeling.
“We’ve played in a lot of Grand Slam finals and we’ve lost more than we’ve won and we certainly don’t want to continue that trend. It was nice to come out with the win last Sunday.”