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Jacobs captures Tour Challenge title

It took some time but Team Jacobs has its fourth Grand Slam of Curling title
Team Jacobs RI
Photo courtesy Roy Iachetta Sr.

Brad Jacobs has his fourth Grand Slam of Curling title.

A narrow takeout to score a pair in the eighth end gave the Sault Ste. Marie rink a 6-5 win over Brendan Bottcher of Edmonton on Sunday to win the Tour Challenge, the latest Grand Slam of Curling event, in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Trailing by one, Jacobs slipped past a pair of Bottcher rocks and proceeded to hit and stick around to score his pair and pick up the victory.

“It feels fantastic,” Jacobs said in an interview with Sportsnet following the win. “I think that’s why you saw such a big celebration at the end there is because we haven’t won anything in a while. That was a little bit of the frustrations of the last 18 months pouring out of us.”

Bottcher took a 5-4 lead over Jacobs in the seventh end when the Sault Ste. Marie skip threw his final shot away after he would be unable to score a pair in the end. The decision meant Bottcher would steal one to take the lead but also give Jacobs the hammer for the final end.

Sunday’s win capped off an event that saw the Jacobs rink, which includes third Ryan Fry, second E.J. Harnden, and lead Ryan Harnden, post a 3-1 record in the round robin before beating American John Shuster in the quarterfinal and then Peter de Cruz of Switzerland in the semifinal.

The Jacobs rink entered the Tour Challenge after going 0-4 in the previous Grand Slam event, the Masters, in late-October.

“We threw that last event right out the window,” Jacobs said. “We know we’re better than that and we’re a lot more competitive than that in these things. Hardly ever do we have an event like that. We threw that one out the window and brought Adam Kingsbury in and he’s been great for us this week in terms of getting our chemistry going and patience and getting our thinking where it needs to be. We have to give him a lot of credit because he helped us out a lot this week.”

Rachel Homan of Ottawa took the Tier 1 women’s title with an 8-4 win over Tracy Fleury of East St. Paul, Man.

After Fleury opened up a 1-0 lead with the hammer in the first end, Homan scored three in the second, stole one in the third and broke the game open further with three in the fifth to take a 7-2 lead.

The win capped off an unbeaten tournament for Homan.

Elena Stern of Switzerland won the women’s Tier 2 final with a 6-5 win over Sayaka Yoshimura of Japan.

Kirk Muyers of Saskatoon won the men’s Tier 2 final, beating Scott McDonald of Kingston, Ont. 8-3 on Sunday.

The Tour Challenge features two tiers with 15 men’s and 15 women’s rinks competing in the top tier. The teams are split into pools of five teams each and include the top 15 teams according to the World Curling Tour’s Order of Merit. 

The second tier includes the next 10 teams on the Order of Merit along with five teams each from the Thunder Bay region.

The next Grand Slam of Curling event is the National, which opens on Dec. 11 in Conception Bay South, Nfld.


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Brad Coccimiglio

About the Author: Brad Coccimiglio

A graduate of Loyalist College’s Sports Journalism program, Brad Coccimiglio’s work has appeared in The Hockey News as well as online at FoxSports.com in addition to regular freelance work with SooToday before joining the team full time.
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