Scotland prevails in Monday afternoon nailbiter at BKT World Men’s Championship

Words like “classic” get tossed around fairly casually in the world of sports, but as the near-sellout crowd that filled the Temple Gardens Centre on Monday afternoon will gladly tell you, they bore witness to what could ONLY be described as a classic between the longest-standing rivals in the sport of curling.

The final score — an extra-end 6-5 win for Scotland’s Team Bruce Mouat over the host Canadian team skipped by Brad Jacobs in a battle of unbeatens at the 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship in Moose Jaw, Sask., — was almost an afterthought, but it will almost surely prove meaningful in the late stages of the round robin.

In the end, it was Mouat’s Scots improving to 4-0 when he made a peel-weight takeout with his last stone of the 11th to remove a Canadian stone frozen in the back eight-foot, shaking off any lingering nerves resulting from a near shot-of-the-year candidate from Jacobs in the 10th that forced the extra end.

“Very good win. Yeah, it’s kind of what we live for — we play for these games,” said Mouat after the dramatic victory. “It’s a lot of fun, the crowd was amazing, and we had a lot of support ourselves, so, yeah. It was a lot of fun just to be on the ice and play some good shots.”

There were plenty of them for both sides — in fact, the Canadian team (Jacobs is backed up by vice-skip Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert, alternate Tyler Tardi, team coach Paul Webster and national coach Jeff Stoughton) outshot Scotland by a cumulative six percentage points (93 to 87).

But in the early going, it was a nervy start for the Canadians, who needed to win a measure to score a single in the first on what appeared to be a routine open hit for one that rolled a little further than expected.

An end later, Scottish vice-skip Grant Hardie changed the momentum with a 20-foot straight-back raise takeout to sit buried on the button. Jacobs then missed both of his shots — neither of them easy, to be fair — and it produced a draw for three for Mouat.

“I think that we struggled early with the ice conditions,” said Jacobs. “We saw a little bit more curl out there, which is really nice by the way; it’s been pretty straight and fast. Today we saw a little bit more curl and we also saw the brooms doing a little bit more work, especially on helping rocks curl. So we’ll learn from that. We didn’t have the greatest first five ends but we had a really strong second half and I think that as long as we can carry that into tomorrow we’ll be in a good headspace.”

Canada would bounce right back in the third thanks to a tricky double takeout from Jacobs on his first, leading to his draw for a game-tying deuce.

Then it was a cat-and-mouse middle four ends — no shortage of rocks in play, some marvellous shotmaking, but ultimately leading to four straight blank ends.

In the eighth, Kennedy’s spectacular nose-freeze to a Scottish stone covering the button would leave Scotland no option other than to take the single point.

An end later, Jacobs had to make a decision with Scotland sitting three on his last stone — take one to tie the game and present the 10th-end hammer to the Scots, or play a double takeout and concede a single to Scotland to take last rock to the 10th trailing by two.

Neither scenario is pristine, and Jacobs chose the latter, and it nearly paid off in stunning fashion in the 10th with a near-miraculous shot. Jacobs made a long raise double-takeout to score two, and very nearly a jaw-dropping three, with the raised Canadian stone, which would have produced the winning point, agonizingly rolling too far.

“It was very close, I don’t think you could get any closer,” said Jacobs with a smile. “Any time you have a shot to win the game is great — you’d hope that it’s a little easier than a run triple but we still, we made the run triple; we just couldn’t hold the (raised stone) but that was still an exciting shot and nice to force an extra end and keep those guys on their toes.”

The decision to concede the point and keep the hammer was one Team Canada would make more often than not, said Jacobs.

“I mean when you’re having to steal against a really great team like that, you look at the statistics and how often that team wins with hammer,” said Jacobs. “It’s not looking good, and it’s still not looking good when you’re down two but at least when you hold the last rock in your hand and you maybe have a shot for the win, that’s a much better feeling.”

Canada enters into the meat of its schedule on Tuesday with the first of the dreaded three consecutive day-night splits, taking on Sweden at 9 a.m. (all times Central Standard) and then Italy’s Team Joel Retornaz (2-2) at 7 p.m.

And while the loss to Scotland may be hard to swallow, the Canadians will take some positives into the Monday evening bye.

“We hung in there,” nodded Gallant. “We probably didn’t have our best stuff today but it was a grind and we battled right to the end and we had a tough shot there for three that we were pretty close to making, and we made him throw his last one in the extra, so yeah there’s positive and I think there’s a little bit to learn from the game as well.”

In the other Monday afternoon games, Switzerland’s Team Yannick Scwhaller (4-1) handed China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (3-1) its first loss, prevailing 7-5; Sweden’s Team Niklas Edin (3-1) doubled South Korea’s Team Hyojun Kim (0-5) 6-3; and Norway’s Team Magnus Ramsfjell (3-1) scored a 10th-end deuce for an 8-6 triumph over Team Korey Dropkin of the United States (2-2).

Italy, Team Lukas Klima of the Czech Republic (2-2), Germany’s Team Marc Muskatewitz, Austria’s Team Mathias Genner (0-4) and Team Ysuyoshi Yamaguchi (0-4) all had byes in the afternoon draw.

The 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship continues Monday with the evening draw at 7 p.m.

Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship are available by CLICKING HERE.

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This story will be available in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/2025worldmen/nouvelles/?lang=fr.