After suffering five successive defeats earlier in the round-robin programme, the Scottish men produced their second successive win at the Ford World Men's Curling Championship here in Halifax, Canada when they beat the USA by 6-4.
The Scots took the lead early, when skip Ewan MacDonald nudged his last stone into the house to score one point in the opening end. He then played a delicate tap-up in the fourth end to score two points and move into a 3-2 lead. In the eighth end, he drew his final stone through a small port to count the single shot that levelled the score at 4-4.
The Scots then went on to win with a candidate for shot of the week from skip MacDonald. He played his last stone of the tenth off a wing stone outside the house to come across the house at an acute angle and slip behind and inside three USA stones around the four-foot ring, which themselves were guarded by other stones.. When the attempt to remove it by USA skip John Shuster came in at the wrong angle, the Scots stole one point from the end for their win.
Speaking about his winning shot, a delighted MacDonald said: "We knew that if we made it, it was going to be tough for him, so when we did make it , I knew it was going to be close."
And about achieving his second win, he added, "it's really amazing the difference of getting a win makes. It just shows you how winning gives you momentum, it's a totally different feeling. If you go a couple down, you're back's against the wall and you're fighting."
Meanwhile USA's third player Tyler George said, "you can only tip your hat to them. A guy makes a shot like that, what can you do?"
The Scottish team now face Switzerland and then Canada,
RESULTS.
Ford World Men's Curling Championship; Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Session 10: China 8, Czech Republic 7; Finland 7, Norway 8; Japan 4, Canada 7; Scotland 6, USA 4.
Session 11: Switzerland 2, Sweden 8; China 5, USA 9; Italy 4, Russia 5; Canada 3, Norway 9.
Session 12: Italy 2, Norway 9; Canada 8, Switzerland 4; USA 6, Sweden 11; China 8, Russia 3.
Standings after 12 sessions: Canada, Norway won 7, lost 1; Sweden, Switzerland 5-3; Japan 4-3; Czech Republic, Finland 3-4; China, USA 3-5; Scotland 2-5; Italy, Russia 2-6.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article