5 Takeaways from Grand Slam of Curling's Players' Championship
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Curling’s final high-profile team event of the 2024-25 calendar closed out Sunday at Toronto’s Mattamy Athletic Centre.
It came down to last rocks to determine winners at the AMJ Players’ Championship, happily keeping fans in their seats right to the very end of the season.
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Indeed, both the men’s and women’s finales — contested by oh-so-familiar sides — were decided by hammer shots.
Here are five takeaways from the Grand Slam of Curling’s concluding team spiel …
1) REVENGE (PART 1)
Sunday’s women’s final of the Players’ Championship was contested by the same two squads which met in the finale of the worlds three weeks back.
Only this time around, it was Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni with the victory over Canada’s Rachel Homan. The 5-4 decision was the fifth grand-slam triumph for the squad and a defence of the title won last year.
After blanking the opening two ends, the Swiss rink counted one in the third and stole another in the first to take a 2-0 edge. Team Homan then counted one back to cut the deficit in half in the fifth. However, Team Tirizoni made it 4-1 in the sixth with a dynamite deuce. True to form, Homan and her Ottawa side scored three in the seventh, forcing a deciding eighth end. But it was Tirinzoni with the winning point after fourth Alena Petz took out two Homan rocks and with a nose-ish hit-and-stick to earn the victory.
It’s a $60,000 first-place prize for Petz, Tirinzoni, second Carole Howald and lead Selina Witschonke from Aurau, Switzerland.
“What a way to finish the season,” Tirinzoni told Sportsnet, moments after the win. “I’m so happy for the team.
“It was a tough game. We never knew until the end, and — finally — we pulled it out.”
The Swiss took on an aggressive approach in avenging the worlds finale loss to Homan, third Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew and lead Sarah Wilkes.
“I think you have to,” added Tirinzoni. “If you want to win this game, then you have to try — you have to be (aggressive). They’re not going to miss too many easy shots. You have to make it difficult for them.
“It worked.”
2) REVENGE (PART DEUX)?
Not quite.
Although it was the same set-up with the men in Sunday’s finale of the Players’ Championship, it proved to be a different result.
In Toronto, the world champ actually became the grand-slam champ — that being Scotland’s Bruce Mouat — staving off the same team it met in the worlds final, Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller.
Mouat won the rematch 6-5 in an extra end, capping an amazing GSOC season for the team from Scotland that saw the Mouat, third Grant Hardie, second Bobby Lammie and lead Hammy McMillan Jr. win four of the five events on the grand-slam calendar.
Wow.
“I just think that we trust each other completely,” Mouat told Sportsnet, moments after the final rock came to a rest. “We’ve worked so hard on our communication and our understanding of each other and all the pressures that come with curling and being away from home all the time. You have to just be a unit and support each other as best you can.
“The three guys that I have, they support me more than most people would.”
Then the Scottish skip executed a triple-raise to remove a Swiss stone off the button and count the winning point in the extra end, after Schwaller, fourth Benoit Schwarz-van Berkel, second Sven Michel and lead Pablo Lachat-Couchepin tied it up with a deuce in the eighth.
Mouat escaped trouble early facing a couple in the first end and eventually forcing the Swiss to take just one with hammer. In the sixth, Scotland counted a deuce to take the lead and then stole one in seven to take command and help it capture the Players’ Championship crown for the third time.
It was also Mouat’s 10th slam victory.
And remember that this all came about for Mouat & Co. with no time-off for them after worlds. After winning that title last Sunday, they celebrated hard and were on the ice 24 hours later for The Curling Group’s Rio Mare Battle of the Sexes — won by Mouat over Homan — before taking to the ice the next day for the start of the Players’ Championship.
Again … wow.
3) THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Talk about the familiar faces finishing strong, keeping up their efforts right down to the final hours of the curling season.
The men’s combatants in the semifinals in Toronto were Mouat, Schwaller and Brier finalists Brad Jacobs and Matt Dunstone, while the women’s semis in the Players’ Championship featured Homan, Tirinzoni, Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg and South Korea’s Kim Eun-jung.
Those are all household names on the season, and if you don’t know Kim, know that the rink from Gangneung was a semifinalist in three of the grand slams and a quarterfinalist in one other.
No … there was no let-down by curling’s powerhouses in this concluding event.
4) EPPING EXTENDS EXCELLENCE
Five of the six teams making up the men’s playoffs on the Mattamy ice made their way to that position all year long.
But somewhat surprisingly earning a spot in that mix with the top shooters — Mouat, Schwaller, Jacobs, Dunstone and Mike McEwen — was John Epping.
If you saw Team Epping battle in the Brier, maybe it’s not surprising. The champions of Northern Ontario were unlucky not to earn a playoff spot in Kelowna, B.C. But their fine play from the national championship carried over into the Players’ Championship, as Epping, third Jacob Horgan, second Tanner Horgan and lead Ian McMillan went through the round-robin with a 4-1 record on the men’s side.
Yes, they fell to Jacobs in the quarterfinal round, but the performance in the Brier and at this slam bodes well for the foursome moving forward into the Olympic year ahead.
5) MORE RINKS MAKE THE JUMP
It wasn’t just Epping on the rise in the last instalment of the curling campaign.
Another South Korean squad skipped by Ha Seung-youn made the playoffs for a third time this GSOC season, and Japan’s Sayaka Yoshimura made the playoffs for a second time, giving those two female teams reason to believe they can become permanent fixtures on the grand-slam scene.
And that’s what they need not only for more grand-slam success in 2025-26 but for hope on the Olympic Games trail next February in Milano-Cortina, Italy.
Plus more contenders is good for the game — for both the excitement and the future.
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