THUNDER BAY – A year-and-a-half of curling frustrations were erased by a single shot.
Sault Ste. Marie skip Brad Jacobs made a clutch hit-and-stick with his final stone on Sunday night, the deuce completing a come-from-behind triumph in the championship game at the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling Tour Challenge at the Thunder Bay Tournament Centre, Edmonton's Brendan Bottcher 6-5 for the title.
“It was nice that I’d thrown that exact same shot on my first one. That made it a little bit less nerve-wracking. It was a great team shot. Anytime you have the rock in your hand and you have the opportunity to win like that, it’s always a great feeling. Even though the nerves are in there, that’s what we live for,” Jacobs said.
“To finish this game off is unbelievable. Our team hasn’t really won a whole lot in the last 18 months. So that big celebration at the end was just 18 months of frustration pouring out of us all at once and I’m just really proud of the boys the way they played this week.”
It was the fourth Grand Slam of Curling title for the Jacobs rink, which also includes lead Ryan Harnden, second E.J. Harnden and third Ryan Fry.
But it’s been two seasons since the former Brier and Olympic champion rink tasted Grand Slam victory, when he captured both the Champions Cup and The National.
Jacobs credited it to patience and mental toughness, especially after narrowly edging the Bottcher foursome in their opening match to start the week.
“We know what we’re going to get out of those guys. We knew that it was going to be a tough battle,” Jacobs said. “They’re a great team, they’ve been playing great all week. I think the back end has been performing very well, especially in the last six months. They’re tough. They’re a team that’s here to stay, they’re one of the top teams in the country.”
It was Bottcher who struck first, grabbing a single in the second end after the two teams blanked the first.
Jacobs showed his imagination in the third, making a triple takeout on his first shot that set up the first of three deuces his team would make in the match. Bottcher followed by removing a pair of stones, but left Jacobs a draw to the eight-foot for his two.
Bottcher, whose rink includes Karrick Martin, Bradley Thiessen and Darren Moulding, evened the match in the fourth, just hanging on to enough of the back eight to avoid surrendering a steal.
Jacobs drew for two in the fifth and had a chance to make a thin double that likely would have led to a blank in the sixth, but just missed and Bottcher tied the game once again.
The Alberta rink played a near perfect seventh, burying the button with a pair of precision shot that forced Jacobs to throw away his final stone and rest his fate in the eighth, down a point but in control of the hammer.
“There was some frustration in the seventh and if you were watching, you could tell,” Jacobs said. “But the great thing is after the end was over everybody deflated and it was business as usual. We knew all we needed to do was score a deuce and we’d gotten a couple of them that game.
The 26-year-old Bottcher, who was making his Grand Slam final debut, said second place wasn’t the result they were shooting for, but second’s not a bad consolation prize.
“We did really all the things we wanted to do, we had a real battle with them in the first game and got on a roll there and had a real battle with them in the last game. That’s all you can really ask for,” Bottcher said.
