Top team claim 11th Grand Slam title

TEAM Mouat re-asserted themselves as curling’s leading team by successfully defending the Co-op Tour Challenge, beating Canada’s Team Dunstone 5-2 in the final to claim their 11th Grand Slam of Curling (GSOC) title last weekend. Having already seen off two of their biggest rivals of recent years in Canada’s Team Gushue and Italy’s Team Retornaz in the knockout stages, the Scottish quartet led by Mouat, and featuring Dumfries and Galloway’s Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan, took early charge of the final in the Silent Ice Centre in Nisku, Alberta. Dunstone looked to have got his men out of trouble when he left Mouat with what looked like an impossible gap to squeeze through. However, with Hardie reading the ice perfectly and sweepers Lammie and McMillan responding with maximum efficiency to his calls, the stone was guided past a guard at the front right of the house, then past two more that were blocking the route to the button to claim that vital second shot. From that point they dominated the opening half of the match, leaving Dunstone with a very difficult tap back of Mouat’s stone that was sitting on the button, just to score one at the second end and after blanking the third end, they scored two at the fourth to move into a commanding 4-1 lead at the break. Dunstone was eventually given a chance to get back into the match at the fifth end after a rare Mouat mistake left him with an open take-out to score a three that would have levelled the scores, but when he hit the wrong side of the Scottish stone he was looking to remove and it jammed to concede a steal the writing was on the wall with the lead extended to 5-1. The victory means that in the 32 year history of GSOC events, Team Mouat have now won as many titles as all other European teams combined.