By Jonathan Brazeau
MEDICINE HAT, Alta. — Grant Hardie and his Scottish squad are fighting fatigue but maintaining momentum at the P&H Masters.
Hardie came straight from Ostrava, Czechia, where his team captured gold at the European Curling Championships, defeating Italy’s Team Stefano Spiller 6-5 in Sunday's final.
Fortunately, his opponent Wednesday was in a similar situation, with the rematch against Spiller already set in stone for the preliminary round of the season's second event in the Grand Slam of Curling presented by Molson Canadian.
This one also finished with a 6-5 scoreline, but with a different outcome, as Team Hardie’s fourth Ross Whyte pinned the draw to the button in the shootout and Spiller was unable to match.
"They're always a great team," said Hardie, who lost 6-5 to Spiller during pool play at the Euros. "You know you're going to get a tough game against them. We had a lot of ends that didn't look like they were going our way, and Ross made a couple of great shots to turn it around. Thankfully, he was on his game today and got us over the line in the end."
The teams kept pace out of the gate. Spiller held the hammer in the seventh end, tied 4-4, and looked to put some separation on the scoreboard until Whyte placed the perfect draw at the top of the button to sit two. Although Spiller would have liked to make a double to score four, he could only remove one to concede the go-ahead point and retain the hammer coming home.
Team Hardie kept the pressure valve up high in the eighth to force Spiller to a single and a shootout.
"With the format, you kind of have to take a few risks in that situation. We took them and got the miss on the last (in seven). Getting a force or a steal there was huge either way, and thankfully we got the steal," Hardie said. "We just knew even that last end we still wanted to stay quite aggressive and put a lot of pressure on him. He had to make a good shot for his one in the shootout, and thankfully, Ross had just thrown that line twice, so we're pretty confident he's going to put it in the pin.”
Hardie improved to a 2-0 record (five points) at the midway mark of the preliminary round, with his team recharging when they can between games.
"It's not obviously ideal, but I think having won last week it just gave us a lot of belief, a lot of confidence, and we're just trying to ride in that high at the moment,” said Hardie, who defeated Canada's Team Jordon McDonald 5-2 on Tuesday to start the tournament. "We'll get back, get a rest. We've got a long time off until our seven o'clock game tomorrow, so rest is certainly going to be the key thing this week."
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Shootout points tweaked
The series modified its points structure for shootouts ahead of the event. The team without the hammer can still earn two points for the win in the shootout but is no longer awarded one point for the loss.
Spiller dropped to a 0-2 record and holds zero points, with both of his losses in shootouts. His team also fell in the draw to the button contest to Canada's Team Brad Jacobs on Tuesday night.
