Bartender Makes Call in Curling Final

Two Swiss teams powered Europe’s 2026 curling season kickoff in an exciting championship final.

Marco Hösli defeated Yannick Schwaller 5-3 to win the Baden Masters, the traditional launch of Europe’s World Curling Tour season.

The two Swiss squads battled through six ends, which ended up blanked as a result of two perfectly matched stones adjacent to the pinhole.

An official was eventually asked to weigh in, and deferred to the Baden Regio CC bartender, who eventually declared the blank. The score remained 3-2 in favour of Team Hösli.

The seventh end saw the Hösli crew in trouble, before fourth thrower Philipp Hösli made a spectacular triple runback to spill three Schwaller counters and lie one.

Schwaller fourth Benoit Schwarz van Berkel then missed a chance at two, scoring a single, and it was tied 3-3 coming home.

Team Hösli kept things nice and clean in the final end to win 5-3.

Schwaller, who placed second to Scotland’s Bruce Mouat at the last two majors of the 2025 season – the world championship and Players’ Championship – defeated Italy’s Joel Retornaz 6-5 in one semifinal while Hösli unceremoniously thrashed Mouat 8-0 in the other semi.

The Scots were last year’s Baden Masters champions and are favoured by some to capture Olympic gold at Cortina d’Ampezzo in February. The squad had won five consecutive matches heading into the semifinal round.

Sweden’s Niklas Edin, the defending Olympic champion, went 2-2 in his pool behind Schwaller’s solid 4-0 pool finish.

The remaining quarterfinalists were Scotland’s Ross Whyte, Switzerland’s Yves Stocker, Mark Muskatewitz of Germany and China’s Xiao Ming Xu.

Team Schwaller was confirmed earlier this summer as the Swiss men’s fours Olympic rep, with the skip also elected for Olympic mixed doubles duties with wife Briar Hürlimann.

Team Silvana Tirinzoni was selected as the Swiss women’s fours Olympic squad.

The Baden Masters follows proper season kickoff events in Japan and Korea.

The latter featured Korea’s national championship in women’s fours and an Olympic qualification battle that was won by Team Gim Eun-ji. The veteran skip and her relatively new squad (formed in 2022) defeated Team Ha Seung-yeon by a 7-4 count in the final and stamped their tickets to Cortina in February.