CALGARY — Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg trumped American Jamie Sinclair 6-4 during Draw 2 action Wednesday morning at the Humpty’s Champions Cup.
It’s the seventh and final Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling event of the season with teams having to win high-profile events over the course of the year in order to receive invites. Hasselborg captured the Stockholm Ladies Cup to earn one of the tour spots while Sinclair scored the U.S. national title to secure her berth.
After Sinclair started with a single, Hasselborg split up the rings in the second end to set up an open hit and stick with her last for a deuce and a 2-1 lead.
“We had a good force in the first and we came up strong with hammer to get two in the second and I think we pretty much controlled it,” Hasselborg said. “It was a solid first game.”
Hasselborg never trailed from there stealing the third when Sinclair faced a couple counters, connected with the first, but couldn’t hit the second one hard enough as it stuck for shot rock. Sinclair was light on the draw in four and Hasselborg took two more to lead 5-1.
“You can never count those in, but we placed the rocks good,” Hasselborg said.
Hasselborg misfired on a double attempt and Sinclair drew for two to close the gap. The teams alternated singles in six and seven with Hasselborg retaining the two-point advantage coming home with hammer and ran Sinclair out of rocks.
Elsewhere, Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni stole her way to an 8-1 rout over China’s Bingyu Wang. After splitting singles to start, Tirinzoni took control with a point in three then rolled out stealing one in four, another in five and four in the sixth.
Cathy Overton-Clapham is in again at third on Team Tirinzoni with Manuela Siegrist recovering from a knee injury.
Alina Paetz of Switzerland pulled out a 7-2 win over Eve Muirhead of Scotland. Team Muirhead was playing as just a trio with lead Lauren Gray not feeling well.
In men’s division action, it was a good morning for Switzerland’s Peter de Cruz, who thumped Scotland’s Grant Hardie 8-1 in six ends. After Hardie stole a single to start, de Cruz scored three for the lead in the second and then used thievery himself to swipe a trio in the fourth and two in the sixth for early handshakes.
Saskatoon’s Steve Laycock got a single in eight to hold on for a 5-4 victory over Scotland’s Tom Brewster.
Round-robin action continues through to Friday evening at WinSport Arena with the top eight teams in each division qualifying for the weekend playoffs. TV coverage begins Thursday at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sportsnet One, online at Sportsnet NOW (Canada) or gsoc.yaretv.com (international).