Curling: Three defeats put pressure on Skip Muirhead

Published on 21/03/2012 05:30

SCOTLAND’s women suffered a third successive round-robin loss – 4-5 to Switzerland – yesterday at the Ford World Women’s Curling Championship in Lethbridge, Canada.

With five round-robin games to go, the medal chances of Eve Muirhead’s team are in real jeopardy. Earlier, they had lost by 2-7 to USA in just seven ends, but the game against the Swiss was much harder to take.

The Swiss got the breakthrough in the fifth end when skip Muirhead’s final draw came up short and they stole a shot for a 3-1 lead. The Swiss stole another single in the sixth, but, in the ninth, Muirhead scored two from the end to level the game at 4-4.

But the Scots did not have last stone in the tenth and lead Claire Hamilton had a stone removed for a hog-line offence. That changed the dynamic of the end, and the Swiss eventually scored the one needed for their win.

Muirhead said: “It came down to one or two misjudgments.

“We’ve had a lot of pressure on our shoulders coming into here, pressure we didn’t need, so we just need to play how we know we can”.

The Scots face the Czech Republic next, with wins becoming ever-more imperative.