Gushue Rocking and Rolling in Kelowna

With files from Curling Canada, World Curling Federation

Canada’s Brad Gushue continues to roll toward a men’s Pan Continental championships playoff berth while Canada’s Kerri Einarson fell to USA to drop to fourth place in the women’s standings.

Playing in the venue—the Kelowna Curling Club—where he and third Mark Nichols placed third at the 1999 Canadian Juniors, Gushue defeated Japan’s Riku Yanagisawa 6-3 to drop the Japanese into a four-way tie for second. Joining Canada and Japan at 3-1 are USA’s Andrew Stopera and New Zealand’s impressive Anton Hood.

Korea’s JongDuk Park is the class of the men’s field at 4-0, after defeating Guyana’s Rayad Husain by a 6-4 count.

USA’s Tabitha Peterson moved to 5-0 after besting Canada 7-5, leaving the Americans as the only women’s team in the competition to stay undefeated.

Canada has three wins and two losses in the standings and sits behind three teams that have now qualified for the four-team playoffs: USA, Japan’s Team Satsuki Fujisawa (4-1) and South Korea’s Team Eunji Gim (4-1).

The top four teams qualify for the world women’s championship next March, while Canada is guaranteed a berth due to host nation status.

The ninth end was the key difference as the momentum shifted between USA and Canada. Einarson tried a thin double that would have scored three and provide a one-point lead. Instead, the foursome from Gimli, Man. settled for one after overcurling the attempt.

“We had a couple of opportunities and I missed a few key shots,” said Einarson. “They made a lot of great ones, though. We put some pressure on them and they made some really good shots and we just didn’t capitalize.”

Amid some controversy surrounding Canada’s host broadcaster of the championships, Gushue made two critical shots in the fifth end to turn what looked like a sure Japanese steal of one, and possibly two, into a Canadian deuce.

On his first, Gushue made a wonderful raise angle-tap to push a buried Japanese counter off the button. On his second, the St. John’s skip made a precise takeout through a tight port to score a pair and take a 3-2 lead.

“We had to play something quiet to make sure we didn’t lose the shooter, and we executed it perfectly,” said Gushue. 

“They left me that hole, and I had a good idea that if I threw it well, it should track down there. I got a good image in my head and just executed it. It was nice; halfway down the sheet, I was pretty confident we had it made.”

From there it was Canadian dominance with a steal, a force and another Canadian deuce in the ninth to put the win on ice.

“The last five ends were certainly a lot better than the first five ends,” said Gushue. “I’ve been kind of complaining about our performance during the first three games, and to be honest, the first five ends we probably took a step back. But the last five ends were solid, and that’s something we can talk about to see what we did to get ourselves to play the way we did in the last five.

“That’s the way we need to play the rest of the event.”