TRURO, N.S. — Defending champion Val Sweeting is off to the Masters final with a chance to make it back-to-back titles at the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling tournament.
Team Sweeting, from Edmonton, defeated Winnipeg’s Team Kerri Einarson 5-3 during Sunday morning’s semifinals at the Rath Eastlink Community Centre.
Sweeting got deuces in the first and third ends while holding Einarson to singles in two and three. Looking to add another two-pointer in five, Sweeting was unable to draw her last rock close enough to the pin to count for second stone and she got just one. Einarson blanked the sixth end, settled for one in seven but ran out of rocks in eight.
“It’s nice to open with a deuce but they had an unfortunate miss, it was a pretty open end,” Sweeting said. “It was nice to get comfortable. I thought we played really well as a team. We kept our rocks in pretty good spots. If the one shot was a little bit off then we made the next one so it just felt like a really good game out there.”
Team Einarson won their first title together at the Tour Challenge Tier 2 in September to earn a spot in the Masters.
Team Sweeting goes up against Ottawa’s Team Rachel Homan, who won 7-5 over Kristy McDonald’s team from Winnipeg. McDonald fell ill before the semifinals and her team was forced to compete with just three players.
Homan scored four in the first to jump out to a 4-0 lead. The teams alternated singles through two and three and Team McDonald took another point in four and stole one in five to narrow the gap 5-3. Homan got two in the sixth and Team McDonald matched with a pair in seven but ran out of rocks in eight.
Team Homan, who finished runner-up at the Tour Challenge Tier 1, roll into the final with an unblemished 6-0 overall record at the Masters.
“They’re going to start with hammer because they had a better record,” Sweeting said. “Just play well and keep our rocks in great spots as we did in this game and it should be a good game.”
Homan is a two-time Masters champion as she aims to win her third title in four seasons.
On the men’s side, Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen meets Jim Cotter of Vernon, B.C.
McEwen held on to win 5-4 over Tour Challenge Tier 1 winner Kevin Koe of Calgary while Cotter took down Saskatoon’s Steve Laycock 8-3.
Koe opened with hammer but gave up a steal of one in the first. After Koe took two in the second to pull ahead, McEwen faced three counters with his last rock in the third end and made the open draw for a single to tie it 2-2. Koe reclaimed the lead with a single four.
McEwen blanked the fifth and capitalized in six with a three-ender. He forced Koe to attempt a triple takeout that only eliminated one and McEwen made the open draw.
McEwen nailed both of his skip stones in seven to avoid giving up multiple points and Koe went for the blank.
Koe had a chance to score two or three with his final shot but had to rush with just a couple seconds left on the clock as he slid out of the hack and he only got one.
Meanwhile, Cotter settled for one in the first and stole points in the second and third ends to jump out 3-0. Laycock took two in the fourth but his final shot in the fifth was too thin and Cotter capitalized making the draw for four. Laycock was forced to a single in six, Cotter added another point in seven and the teams shook hands.
Team Cotter won the Tour Challenge Tier 2 event in September to earn a berth in the Masters.
McEwen will play in his fifth final in the past seven Pinty’s GSOC events while it’s Cotter’s first trip to a final since the 2012 Masters.
Team McEwen have won five Pinty’s GSOC titles and earned their first at the Masters in 2010 when the event was known as the World Cup of Curling.
The Masters is the first major and the second event of the 2015-16 Pinty’s GSOC season. The men’s final goes down later Sunday at 1 p.m. AT (watch on CBC) with the women’s final at 6 p.m. AT (watch on Sportsnet).
