Canada goes for gold against Scotland
For the second straight year, Canada and Scotland will battle for men’s curling supremacy.
It took an extra end, but Glenn Howard’s Coldwater, Ont., quartet edged Scotland’s Tom Brewster 7-6 in the Page 1-2 playoff game Saturday afternoon to advance directly to today’s final at the world men’s curling championship in Basel, Switzerland.
That proved only a momentary setback for Brewster’s Aberdeen rink, which earned its second straight final berth with a 7-6 victory over Sweden’s Sebastian Kraupp in Saturday night’s semifinal.
Howard appeared to have things well in hand against Brewster in the 1-2 game after cracking a four-ender on the eighth end with a double takeout to go up 6-3. However, Brewster responded with a deuce on the ninth and then stole the tying point on the 10th when Howard’s draw came up short.
Having a chance to redeem himself on 11, Howard made no mistake.
“We were pretty good in that game but I’d like to see us pick it up a bit,’’ said Howard, who will be gunning for his fourth world title today. “I don’t care if we curl 12 per cent, as long as we win the game (today). This is as far as we can be so far, we’re in the final, so we’ve made goal No. 3 and so we’re right where we want to be.”
Howard, third Wayne Middaugh, second Brent Laing and lead Craig Savill blanked the first two ends before scoring a single point on the third. Brewster went into the halftime break with a 2-1 lead, however, thanks to a single on the fourth and a steal of one on the fifth.
The rinks exchanged singles on the sixth and seventh ends before Brewster ran into trouble on the eighth, giving Howard his four-spot. “We got an uncharacteristic miss out of Tom,’’ Howard said of the eight hend . “We were looking at it and looking at it, and we ended up chiselling i t and got four.”
“That was just one end and apart from that one end, we played pretty well,” Brewster said.
Brewster, who earlier lost 7-5 to Howard in the round robin and fell to Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton 6-5 in last year’s gold-medal match, isn’t feeling particularly snake-bitten playing against Canada.
“We’ve just got to go out and play well. If we can get rid of the small mistakes we’ll give him a game for sure,’’ he said. “We’re night and day from the side we were 12 months ago, so here’s hoping we can beat Canada . . . it’d be nice.”
I DON’T CARE IF WE CURL 12 PER CENT, AS LONG AS WE WIN THE GAME
GLENN HOWARD