Curling: David Murdoch claims victory over Japan

Scotland opened their campaign at the Ford World Men’s Curling Championships in Victoria, Canada, yesterday with a solid 7-5 win over Japan in their first round-robin game.

With two-times world champion David Murdoch, from Lockerbie, skipping Tom Brewster’s Aberdeen-based squad, the Scots took the early lead with two single steals and a score of four in the fourth when Murdoch tapped-out a lying Japanese stone.

In the fifth end, Japan scored one point to reduce the Scottish lead to 6-2 when skip Yusuke Morozumi drew for a single point. The Scots never really looked back after this strong start, although there was a slight wobble when the Japanese stole singles in the next two ends to reduce the Scottish lead to 6-4. But in the eighth end, Murdoch had an accurately-weighted draw to score one point on his way to an eventual 7-5 win.

After this opening win, Murdoch said: “One of the things we talked about was that we really wanted to start with a solid couple of games.

“If you’ve got any hope of trying to get into that top play-off game, you need to start well. We’ve got that first win and it’s a nice way to start.”

Speaking about the run of steals that went against his team, Murdoch explained: “When a team is so far down, they’re going to throw the kitchen sink at you. They made so many shots – they played 100 per cent for a couple of ends and I was left with a few circus shots.

“We decided to be a little bit more aggressive in the eighth and make sure we got our score. We knew that, if we scored in eight, it was going to be game over”.

The Scots were due to face Denmark overnight before a clash with hosts Canada in their next two round-robin games.

China, meanwhile, made up for their opening session loss to Canada when they faced the Czech Republic in the same 
session as Scotland’s win over Japan. They were already 4-3 ahead when their skip Rui Liu split two of his own stones to score five points in the seventh end to go 9-3 on their way to a 12-5 victory.

In the game between Denmark and USA, American skip Brady Clark, making his debut at this level, scored two points with a draw in the third end to take a 5-1 lead. Later, he built on that with a tap-in for a single point in the eighth end to lead by 7-3 lead in a game that USA eventually won by 8-3.