Curling: Murdoch rides luck to clinch two wins

SCOTLAND kept their campaign in good shape when they beat Switzerland by 8-6 in the eighth session of round-robin play at the Ford World Men’s Championship in Victoria, Canada.

This result puts them in joint second place, on four wins behind the unbeaten hosts, who have five wins.

The Scots blanked the first end and then scored two in the second when skip David Murdoch tapped-out a Swiss stone. Switzerland got on the scoreboard with a nudge on a Scottish stone to score one in the third and then Murdoch drew for one shot in the fourth end to take a 3-1 lead.

The Swiss blanked the fifth and got their reward in the sixth when their skip Sven Michel cleared out two Scottish stones to leave two of his own in the house to score two and level the game at 3-3.

Murdoch played a strong promote double take-out in the seventh to score two and take a two-shot lead again, at 5-3, but the Scots definitely got a break in the eighth when, after Murdoch jammed on an attempted heavy-weight double take-out, Michel went all the way through the house when he had an open draw – with backing – to score just two instead of the three shots that looked on the cards.

Afterwards, skip Murdoch said: “On my last, it was just dead straight and I jammed it. That gave him a chance for a three, and for him to horse it through the back was most uncharacteristic, but that was part and parcel of them being down on time. You need a little bit of luck this week, and that was our first piece of luck, which is nice, and hopefully we’ll get a little more.”

The Scots went on to add to that bonus in the ninth, when Murdoch decided against a straightforward draw for one shot and opted for a heavy cross-house double that he executed perfectly to score three and effectively end the game as a contest. The Scots ran the Swiss out of stones in the tenth and left one Swiss stone in the house for their eventual 8-6 win.

Third player Tom Brewster was full of praise for the decision to go for the big double in the ninth end. He said: “That was a big shot but it was worth going for. If we give up one, we’re coming home trying to get a two with the hammer. We felt pretty comfortable being in that position so it was worth going for.”

Speaking more generally, he added: “We’ve got two more wins today. We’re much more positive. We’ve only lost one game and we’ve got a few wins in the bag, so that’s good. There was a lot more energy about the team today.”

The Scots sit out the next session before playing Russia and the USA.