Mouat misses fourth win in a row

With files from the Grand Slam of Curling

Team Ross Whyte won a Grand Slam title.

Then they made a beeline for the airport.

Despite the rushed departure, the flight home to Scotland from the Sleeman Centre in Guelph, Ont. was surely tolerable. 

Whyte and mates Robin Brydone, Duncan McFadzean and Euan Kyle cashed $38,000 for their 5-4 championship win over Calgary’s Brad Jacobs and now head into the Scottish men’s championship (Feb. 2-8 at Dumfries) on a high.

“It’s unreal,” Whyte told the Slam media team. “This is what you’re hoping for your whole career, getting to these points and winning those massive games.

“Thankfully, we’ve done it today and got over the line on our second try.”

It’s the first Slam crown for Scotland’s No. 2 in men’s fours, who lost last season’s Masters final to Italy’s Joel Retornaz.

Whyte and Co. are actually the defending Scottish champions. Last year’s joyous win was followed by a kick to the groin when the third-place finishers—chief rivals Team Bruce Mouat—were instead selected to represent Scotland at the world men’s championship in Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

It was Jacobs’ second straight loss to a Scottish team in a Slam final after Mouat’s men beat him seven weeks ago in St. John’s.

Jacobs, Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert are the ones who stopped Mouat from winning four straight Slams this season, something Retornaz almost pulled off a year ago.

Jacobs, who was 0-9 head-to-head against Mouat heading into the semifinal, defeated Mouat 7-5 while Whyte dispatched Winnipeg’s Matt Dunstone by the same score.

Guelph marked a Slam event like no other, for a few reasons. First off, Brad Gushue’s early season semi-stumbles were suddenly thrown into the light, as his team went 0-4 in their pool and went home early.

It’s believed this hasn’t happened at a Grand Slam event since—wait for it—the year 2006.

This Slam also featured a rules tweak, where teams lost last-rock advantage if they blanked consecutive ends. That meant Jacobs, who blanked the opening end of the final, was forced to draw into an empty house for a single point in the second end.

It was Whyte’s turn in the fourth end. The 26-year-old skip had to make a tap for a point after blanking the third end, which tied the score heading into the break.

The game sparkled throughout the second half, and peaked when the Scots made a series of brilliant back-end shots coming home to score two for the narrow victory.

Jacobs had struck for a single in the seventh end to make it 4-3 but gave Whyte last stone for the final frame.

“We took a bit longer to flip the hammer than we were hoping, but we managed it,” Whyte said.

“The last shot, we’ve seen a couple down that line, so we were just hoping I’d throw it well and we’d sweep it good and we managed to make it, so it feels great.”

Only two of the eight men’s playoff teams hailed from Canada. Germany’s Marc Muskatewitz, Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller, USA’s Korey Dropkin and Sweden’s Niklas Edin were the quarterfinalists.

Schwaller defeated Retornaz and Dropkin defeated John Epping (Sudbury, Ont.) in Saturday’s morning’s tiebreaker round.

On the women’s side, red-hot Rachel Homan (Ottawa, Ont.) faced off against Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg in the championship final.