The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Brydone chalks up famous win over Mouat at Scottish
Glen Muirhead and his team made a winning start at the Scottish Championships in Perth yesterday – but another local curler, Robin Brydone, stole their thunder with a shock victory over defending champion and European gold medallist Bruce Mouat.
Brydone trailed the Murrayfield skip 3-1 and 5-4 before nicking a series of single stones which gave him a famous 7-5 win at the Dewars Centre.
Muirhead and company recovered from 3-2 down to defeat Cameron McNay (Greenacres) 7-3 in their first match since losing to Mouat in last month’s Perth Masters final.
Local junior Callum Kinnear thought he had weathered the storm when he turned a 6-1 deficit into an 8-7 lead against Forfar’s Murray Young, but Young then counted a two at the last end to win 9-8.
Glasgow’s Grand Slam champion Ross Paterson opened his round-robin campaign with an assured 10-3 victory over triple world champion Ewan MacDonald (Inverness).
Meanwhile seven-time winner Eve Muirhead is aiming to reclaim the title this week after missing out on the event last year while she was representing Team GB at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
Her position as the dominant skip in the Scottish women’s game is, however, reinforced by the inclusion in her line-up of half of last year’s champion rink, Jen Dodds and Vicky Wright having joined forces with Muirhead, Vicki Chalmers and Lauren Gray at the beginning of this season.
“We are really looking forward to it after missing out on the chance to compete last year,” said the 28-yearold, who returned to the game after hip surgery last summer and plays Aberdeen’s Maggie Wilson this afternoon.
“We have a lot of experience plus two defending champs in our team, so we are in a good place after what was a bit more of a challenging start to our season.
“We struggled a bit at the start of the season but we have had time together and this is now a really good time for us, we have prepared well for this championships and we are ready to go.”
Former world junior silver medallist Sophie Jackson will skip her programme-supported team who were last year’s runners-up and this year they are hoping to feed off the knowhow of former national championship winning skip Tom Brewster, who has been coaching them since the start of the season.