STEINBACH, Man. — Team Ross Whyte captured the Crown Royal Players' Championship men's title after defeating Team Kyle Waddell 6-3 in Sunday's all-Scottish final at the Southeast Event Centre.
It's the second career Grand Slam of Curling title for Whyte, who earned his first almost one year ago at the Masters.
The Stirling-based club of Whyte, third Robin Brydone, second Craig Waddell and lead Euan Kyle cashed in $55,000 from the prize purse.
"Yeah, this is special," Whyte said. "Really, you want to win every Grand Slam you play in, but to win the Players' Championship, it's quite a feeling."
Having two Scottish men's teams face off in a Grand Slam final seemed inevitable, as it was the 10th consecutive event with at least one of their clubs playing on Championship Sunday.
Although some have been predicting Team Bruce Mouat, winners of six Grand Slam titles over the past two seasons, but the world No. 1 club missed the playoffs after losing to Team John Shuster of the United States in a tiebreaker.
Whyte finished runner-up twice earlier this season, falling to Canada's Team Matt Dunstone at the AMJ Masters in September and Switzerland's Team Yannick Schwaller at the HearingLife Canadian Open just three weeks ago.
His team's season started with uncertainty as second Duncan McFadzean has yet to play as he recovers from knee surgery. That required a roster shuffle with Craig Waddell leaving his brother's team to fill in.
"We're so proud of ourselves. We battled a lot this year and it's been a lot of tough situations," Whyte said. "We had injuries. We had different players coming in, and Craig himself has fit in great. He's made it seem seamless."
The Waddells had linked up with third Mark Watt, second Angus Bryce and lead Blair Haswell in the summer. The Hamilton-based club started the Grand Slam season in the Tier 2 division of the AMJ Masters but put in the work to reach the top flight.
Team Waddell went undefeated through pool play, winning three games outright and two in the shootout, including a 7-6 decision over Whyte on Friday morning. Waddell earned a bye to the semifinals and eliminated China's Team Xu Xiaoming 5-4 to advance to his first Grand Slam final as a skip.
"Yeah, that just shows the strength and depth. I mean, I think people were maybe expecting an all-Scotland final at some point. I think they were expecting Team Mouat in it, but Team Waddell came out this week and, I mean, undefeated going into the final," Whyte said.
"It's pretty impressive with who they've played. We're obviously there and thereabouts, but to put in that sort of performance is very impressive from all the countrymen."
Whyte didn't lose once in regulation, posting three outright wins and two shootout losses. After eliminating Shuster 6-4 in the quarterfinals, Whyte got revenge on Schwaller with a 5-4 victory in the semis.
"It's a tough week. You look at the field, and you go, where's your easy one? You can't find it, and you start to look at yourselves and go, OK, this is gonna be a long week," Whyte said. "But brilliant to get through it, beat a lot of good teams, and we fully deserved it this week."
Waddell started with the hammer, but he was heavy on his draw in the opening frame and Whyte struck the scoreboard first with a steal.
Although Waddell made no mistake on his draw in the second to tie it, he stuffed a double in the third that gave Whyte an open draw for two.
Another steal in four handed Whyte a 4-1 lead heading into the halftime break.
Waddell regrouped with a double for a deuce in five to narrow the gap, however, Whyte held shot rock by an inch at the edge of the eight-foot circle in six and matched with a draw for another pair of points to restore the three-point advantage.
With a blank in seven, Waddell held the hammer coming home, but didn't get to throw either of his skip stones as Whyte ran him out of rocks.
"We knew they came out pretty hot against most teams this week. They'd kind of taken twos and threes and fours, and we were like, right, we cannot let them get a jump because then they'll get their tails up," Whyte said. "They're a very good hitting team, and we knew that, so we knew we had to try and kind of be patient, but we flipped the hammer a lot quicker than we thought we were going to, which was great.
"Kyle, I don't think he'd missed the four-foot this week. Thankfully, in the final, we got one miss off him quite early, and that kind of maybe flipped momentum a little bit. We knew it was going to be tough towards the end, and we just ground out."
Team Waddell banked $45,000 from the prize purse.
It was the second-ever all-Scottish men's final in the Grand Slam of Curling. Ross Paterson skipped his squad past Mouat to win the National in December 2018. Kyle Waddell was part of that one, throwing third stones for Paterson.
