MOOSE JAW -- It took a few ends for Team Canada’s Brad Jacobs to get on the scoreboard in their opening game at the BKT World Men’s Curling Championship, but once they did, it was all systems go.
Jacobs and his rink of third Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant and lead Ben Hebert scored a pair in the fourth end, another three in the sixth and would go on to a 7-3 victory over Japan in Draw 1 of the tournament Saturday afternoon in Moose Jaw.
The contest was played in front of a packed Temple Gardens Centre, with the 4,500-seat arena nearly selling out for the opening draw -- and needless to say, it was a special moment for the Jacobs foursome.
“Oh, yeah, it's fantastic,” Jacobs said shortly after wrapping up the nine-end win. “We were really excited, there were a little bit of excited nerves coming into this game. I think as the building continued to fill up during practice, just before we got started we all started to get goosebumps.”
The good thing is the Jacobs foursome are no strangers to such an environment in their careers, and once the nerves settled down, it was all business.
“Awesome job by the guys,” Jacobs said. “They played great in front of me, we settled in nicely. We got a deuce and a force and a three and I think we were gripping the broom a little less tight from that point on, which was good.”
Things started off a little cautiously, though, as Japan skip Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, third Riku Yanagisawa, second Shingo Usui and lead Satoshi Koizumi did their part to keep Jacobs from putting up a big score early, leading to three blank ends by Canada to start the game.
“I think our objective going into that game was if our opponent threw it in the rings, we were going to try to waste an end and get a blank, assuming we had hammer, which we did,” Jacobs said.
“We do want to put points on the scoreboard so blanking all the ends like that isn't fun for us either and I know that it's not super entertaining for the fans…. What was really nice was when we made a couple big shots finally later in the game, to hear the crowd kind of start to get into it and erupt a little bit. I think that makes us want to just make more shots for the fans and keep them going all week.”
Canada put their first points on the board with a deuce in the fourth, and after holding Japan to one, Yamaguchi would miss an attempted double on his final shot in the sixth, leading to Jacobs drawing the four-foot for three. A deuce in the eighth made it 7-2, and Canada would hold Japan to one in the ninth, leading to the teams shaking hands.
Hebert was impressed with what he saw from Yamaguchi and crew, but even moreso with Jacobs, who would end up curling 97 per cent. In fact, each of Canada’s members were over 90 per cent on the afternoon.
“We knew they were going to play tough,” Hebert said .”We played them before, but our skipper there ended off at the Brier where he did today. He was riding the hot hand and really riding the energy of the crowd out there. He got use going and I had the goose bumps going a couple of times. Yeah, that was awesome.”
Other opening draw results Czechia (Lukas Klima) take a 6-5 win over a time-strapped Korea (Hyojun Kim), who were down to 15 minutes with five ends to play and finished with 30 seconds left on the clock.
Switzerland (Yannick Schwaller) defeated Norway (Magnus Ramsfjell) 7-4 and the United States (Korey Dropkin) scored one in the 10th to get past Italy (Joel Retornaz) 7-6.
Draw 2 takes place at 7 p.m. Saturday and will see Canada taking on Germany, Sweden facing China, Korea battling Italy and Austria facing Scotland.
