By Jonathan Brazeau
STATELINE, Nev. — It might seem hard to believe, but we’re already past the midway mark of the Grand Slam of Curling season.
Three events down, and two more to go, with some familiar faces in the finals at the KIOTI GSOC Tahoe, the first-ever international Grand Slam event.
Scotland’s Team Bruce Mouat edged Canada’s Team Matt Dunstone 7-6 on Sunday for the second straight men's final, only this time by the narrowest of margins in the draw to the button shootout at 0.3 cm.
Canada’s Team Rachel Homan topped Switzerland’s Team Silvana Tirinzoni for the third consecutive women’s final with a score of 7-4.
Both finals pitted the top two teams in their respective world rankings. To steal an old Nintendo slogan: The best play here.
FIRST END: Another Grand Slam event, another week where Homan rewrites the record book (thankfully, it's just a digital file and not an actual book).
Skip Rachel Homan and second Emma Miskew captured their record-extending 20th Grand Slam titles, one month after surpassing legendary men’s skip Kevin Martin for the most all-time during the CO-OP Tour Challenge.
Among active women's skips, the next closest to Homan is Sweden's Anna Hasselborg with eight titles — not exactly close.
Homan also matched the women’s division record for most consecutive Grand Slam titles won at three. No surprise, Homan had done it twice previously during the 2015-16 and 2018-19 seasons, with Hasselborg also accomplishing the feat once in 2019-20.
Martin holds the overall record on the men’s side with five consecutive Grand Slam titles, accomplished over two seasons in 2007. No one has won four straight in a single season. Mouat is the only skip to win four (non-consecutively) in a single season, accomplished in 2024-25.
Even reaching the final extended Homan’s record run to eight straight. In total, Homan has competed in 33 finals in 64 tournaments. That’s right, Homan has appeared in the final in more than half of her Grand Slam appearances.
We'll pause for a second here in case all those numbers blew your mind. Ready again? Here are a few more.
Homan and Tirinzoni have faced off against each other in a record 10 Grand Slam finals. Homan holds the advantage at 8-2.
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, Homan has appeared in 11 women's finals and Tirinzoni has reached eight. Everyone else? Seven combined.
The most recent Grand Slam women's final to feature neither Homan nor Tirinzoni? That would be Kaitlyn Lawes vs. Jennifer Jones for the Tour Challenge title over two years ago on Oct. 22, 2023.
SECOND END: Tirinzoni hasn’t dropped a game in the preliminary round this Grand Slam season with an 18-3 record — all three losses coming against Homan in the finals.
Tirinzoni started all three finals with the hammer, but as Dr. Ian Malcolm would say: Homan, uh, finds a way (yes, it was essential to include that Jeff Goldblum signature pause there).
It was a huge steal of four points in the first end that did the most damage during the CO-OP Tour Challenge final. Homan poured on the pressure again to begin the KIOTI GSOC Tahoe final, sitting five counters in the house. That forced Team Tirinzoni's fourth Alina Pätz to draw to the button, surrendering only a single this time.
Team Tirinzoni recovered in the second, with Pätz threading the needle to score a deuce.
Homan’s incredible in-off on her first skip stone in seven set things up for a deuce and a 5-4 lead without the hammer coming home.
After a couple of misses from Team Tirinzoni, including a flashed rock from the skip herself, Homan turned the heat up a notch again to sit four. Pätz needed the shot rock to force a shootout but couldn’t outcount Homan’s two stones in the four-foot circle.
As if it wasn't obvious enough, Homan was flying high in Tahoe, at 6,285 feet above sea level, and is all tuned up with the Olympic trials in Halifax only a week and a half away.
“I think win or lose here, we were happy with being in the final and playing some come-from-behind wins and sticking together as a team, whether we were leading or whether we were behind,” Homan said. “We got what we needed out of this week and just dial it in for trials.”
Homan hasn’t lost to another Canadian team in over a year, with 30 consecutive wins since falling to Team Kerri Einarson in last season's Tour Challenge women’s final on Oct. 6, 2024.
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, and the beginning of the “Homan Empire” era, Homan is 80-2 against Canadian teams.
THIRD END: Mouat earned his 12th Grand Slam men’s title, inching closer to Glenn Howard (14) for third place on the all-time wins list among skips.
What’s remarkable is that half of Mouat’s haul has come over the past eight Grand Slam events.
Also worth noting is that Mouat has captured all 12 with the same crew: third Grant Hardie, second Bobby Lammie and lead Hammy McMillan Jr.
Their first came eight years ago in this event, when it was called the National. It was also the first Grand Slam event they played together, and Mouat made history by becoming the youngest men’s skip to win a Grand Slam title at age 23.
“One was crazy at the time, so the run that we've been on over the last two years has been insane for us,” said the now-31-year-old Mouat. “We're absolutely buzzing to kind of be getting close to the great names that are on this trophy and the likes of the best players in our sport. We're insanely gracious and grateful to be able to come and play the Slams.”
FOURTH END: As thrilling as the shootout was to watch, it had to be heartbreaking for Dunstone to lose out by only 0.3 cm.
Even Mouat didn’t know who had won after the measure and had to ask his teammates repeatedly since nobody was celebrating.
“It doesn't get any closer than that,” Hardie said after the 7-6 victory. “First, I think we feel really bad for Team Dunstone because they played a phenomenal game there. It was a proper final. They pushed us all the way and little bit fortunate to get over the line, but just incredible to close out there and squeak it by whatever it was, 0.3 of a centimetre. Just great.”
It wasn’t actually the first time a Grand Slam title was decided in a shootout, as Brad Gushue squeaked out the win over Reid Carruthers in the 2016 Elite 10 final. The Elite 10 featured a match play format, where teams had to count two or more with the hammer or steal the end to win a point, so the shootout prevented games from carrying on ad nauseam.
Shootouts replaced extra ends in the preliminary round and tiebreaker stage in all Grand Slam events at the start of this season.
The rule was extended to the playoffs ahead of last month’s CO-OP Tour Challenge. That event also saw a nail-biter in the semifinals as Homan covered the pin, and Hasselborg drew to the button but came up just short of matching Homan’s shooter. (Funny, the Facebook crowd didn't seem to have a problem with that shootout.)
As we mentioned in a previous Eight Ends, the end goal is to find a way to tighten up the length of a game.
In this case, it also makes the finish way less predictable. Over the previous four seasons, the team with the hammer in the extra end won 82.6 per cent of the time.
In games that have gone to a shootout this season, that number has plummeted to 52 per cent — pretty much a fair and even split with more drama on the ice.
FIFTH END: No Canadian men's team looks as well-prepared for the Olympic trials as Dunstone, with three consecutive Grand Slam final appearances, including a title win at the AMJ Masters.
It’s crazy to think that before this season, Dunstone hadn’t even appeared in three Grand Slam finals.
Dunstone holds a 26-9 record over six events on tour this season.
His Winnipeg-based club is 10-3 against teams they'll face in the upcoming Olympic trials, including a 3-0 run against reigning Brier champs Team Brad Jacobs. All three games were also intense situations with Dunstone defeating Jacobs in the AMJ Masters and KIOTI GSOC Tahoe semifinals, plus the PointsBet Invitational final.
SIXTH END: What a Grand Slam top-tier debut for Team Bo-bae Kang. The reigning world junior champions from South Korea qualified for the playoffs after routing Team Einarson 7-0 in the tiebreakers.
That set up a quarterfinal showdown against top-seeded Homan, who rolled out to a 7-2 victory.
“We hadn't seen them before, and they look great,” Homan said. “They are up and coming, and they look like they're going to be tough real soon.”
Flashback to the 2009 Players’ Championship when a certain junior phenom was making her series debut and reached the quarterfinals.
SEVENTH END: The only disappointing thing about Homan’s week in Lake Tahoe? She didn’t see a bear. The funny thing is, her teammates spotted one when she wasn’t around.
Every curler this reporter talked to during the week absolutely loved their time in Tahoe from the scenic lake itself to the surrounding mountains and, of course, the bears, oh my.
Mike McEwen was the first to encounter the local wildlife and snapped a selfie with the bear he named Kevin, after the Ol’ Bear himself, Kevin Martin. McEwen was planning to go for a hike outside town and thought best to look up if there were any bears around.
“I didn't have to leave town for that to actually happen,” McEwen said with a laugh. “Three blocks from the hotel. I was just strolling, listening to some good tunes, and I don't think I even noticed the bear until I was about 20 feet away from it. Probably reasonably friendly, I guess. He wasn't bothered by me, but yeah, my heart rate shot up probably for a second there when I realized what the heck was in front of me.
“I was kind of just dumbfounded and then had that questionable line of thinking: Do I take a couple pictures? And I better be ready to run just in case. I've never seen a bear close up like that, like not in the wild — if you can call in town the wild — but I guess it's not a zoo or anything.”
McEwen was also the biggest mover among the Tahoe men's teams this week, climbing from 11th to eighth in the world rankings thanks to a quarterfinal finish.
The seven-time Grand Slam champ McEwen went 2-2 through the preliminary round for the third consecutive Grand Slam event, requiring tiebreakers once more. While his team was eliminated with tiebreaker losses to Team Brad Jacobs in the AMJ Masters and Team Brad Gushue in the CO-OP Tour Challenge, McEwen ran out of Brads and faced Italy's Team Joël Retornaz this time, emerging victorious with a decisive 7-3 victory.
Although McEwen dropped an 8-4 decision to Mouat in the quarterfinals, the overall result was a huge boost.
Hasselborg was the biggest mover on the women's side, rising from seventh to fourth after reaching the semifinals before bowing out with a 6-3 loss to Homan.
EIGHTH END: Sponsors’ exemptions are the wild cards in any Grand Slam of Curling event.
The KIOTI GSOC Tahoe featured a special team led by footballer-turned-curler Jared Allen, with three-time world champion Wayne Middaugh at skip, two-time Olympic gold medallist John Morris at third and U.S. Olympian Jason Smith at second.
Team Allen didn’t finish last and picked up a point on debut in the shootout against Team Ross Whyte, two-time reigning Scottish champs and last year’s Masters winners.
Middaugh touched the lid with his shootout attempt, but it wasn't enough. Any other game and it would have been a winner, however, Whyte had covered the pin with his sharp shot.
Allen is also in line for the "whiff of the week" bonus after snapping his broom while sweeping.
Still, Team Allen took Team Whyte to the distance in a Rocky-esque finish (spoiler alert for a nearly 50-year-old film).
“I think it shows the competitive edge of everybody. I think you're going to give guys that see us out there competing say, 'Holy crap,'" said Allen, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame earlier this year. “But at the same time, we're paying homage because we put a lot of hard work in. Obviously, Wayne, Jason and Johnny are legends in their own right, but being here in the States and seeing us compete, seeing us take these top teams the distance, I mean that's just going to encourage people, right?
“It makes for great TV, makes for great entertainment and at the end of the day, sports have to be entertaining to sustain. I think you just saw how riveting curling is. I mean, there are so many swings, so many ups and downs with some of the top teams in the world.”
EXTRA END: No shootouts here, we need an extra end to tell you that the Grand Slam of Curling is running back to Saskatoon for its next event, the HearingLife Canadian Open, taking place Dec. 16-21 at Merlis Belsher Place.
It’ll be the third time the venue hosts a Grand Slam event, following the 2019 Champions Cup and 2023 Masters.
Full-event and weekend ticket packages are now available. Visit GSOCtickets.com to purchase yours today.
The qualification cutoff date is Tuesday, so expect an announcement of the teams and the draw schedule very soon.
