Jacobs also had C-side woes
A difficult 2024-25 curling season continues for Brad Gushue.
The six-time Brier champion and two-time Olympic medallist skip was knocked out of the quarterfinals of the Henderson Metal Fall Classic in Sault Ste. Marie today.
Gushue fell 5-4 to Saskatchewan’s Mike McEwen after falling to the C-side of the triple-knockout cashspiel, where he advanced to the playoffs with back-to-back wins over Japanese veterans Shinya Abe and Yusuke Morozumi.
Gushue has been making some money—while not winning tour titles—the hard way this season.
Gushue beats Abe in the C-sideThe first Grand Slam of the season featured the triple knockout format and saw the St. John’s foursome, then still with E.J. Harnden in the lineup, scratch and claw their way through the C-side and then into the final, before they were dispatched by Scotland’s Bruce Mouat.
Harnden, of course, agreed to depart the Gushue team after Charlottetown. Adam Casey played in the Soo, and Edmonton’s Brendan Bottcher will take his place in the Gushue lineup next weekend at the Pan Continental Championships in Lacombe, Alta.
The Curling News’ George Karrys wrote a column extolling the virtues of the triple knockout format after Charlottetown.
Karrys suggested that today’s competitors, who do not play the TKO format in most of their top tier events, “have, for the most part, got it pretty sweet these days.
“It’s either one or two games a day in the usual Slam pool system, whereas three-game days are a fact of life—for the unfortunate—in the triple knockouts.”
Karrys goes on to state that life on the C-side “is a vicious kind of existence. Things tend to blur and you might find yourself getting snippy with your teammates. Unless you can immediately revert to autopilot, which is a whole other kind of existence.”
By this point, Gushue must be sick and tired of the TKO.
Brad Jacobs also fell afoul of the format. Now skipping the former Team Bottcher 2.0, Jacobs won two games in the C-side on his hometown ice before falling in the Saturday night qualifier to John Epping of Sudbury, Ont.
Team Jacobs will attempt to regroup at a tour event in Penticton, B.C. next weekend.
Team Jacobs have yet to find their grooveItaly’s Joel Retornaz and Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers also dropped down in to the Soo’s C-side wilderness, but—like Gushue—both made it into the playoffs.
Retornaz won both his C matches and his quarterfinal to advance to today’s semifinals.
Carruthers, who lost Jacobs to the ex-Bottchers and picked up Caitlin Schneider, had to win three in a row to qualify.
Carruthers second Derek SamagalskiCarruthers then fell to Switzerland’s Marco Hoesli 7-2 in his quarterfinal, while Matt Dunstone took out Epping 6-5 in an extra end.
Dunstone and Hoesli, the two A-side qualifiers, ended up battling in the final where Dunstone came away with the 7-5 championship victory in an extra end.
McEwen also beat Gushue earlier in the Soo, and had previously defeated him in the final of the PointsBet Invitational in September.