Canada’s Team Jacobs puts together two-victory day at 2025 BKT World Men’s Championship

Not every victory is going to be a work of art, but ultimately, they’re all satisfying when you’re chasing gold at the 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship.

Tuesday night at the Temple Gardens Centre in Moose Jaw, Sask., Canada’s Team Brad Jacobs had to go into grind mode (helped by yet another near-perfect shooting game from the skipper) to pick up its fifth win in six games, a gritty 4-2 triumph over Joel Retornaz’s Italian team (2-5).

The victory lands Jacobs, vice-skip Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert, alternate Tyler Tardi, team coach Paul Webster and national coach Jeff Stoughton in a tie for second place in the 13-team round-robin standings with Scotland’s Team Bruce Mouat, behind the surprising Chinese team skipped by Xiaoming Xu (6-1).

“It’s really nice to be 5-and-1 and to have won two games today against two really tough opponents,” said Jacobs, who was scored at 99 per cent against Italy. “But, you know, there’s still so much curling left in this round-robin. It’s actually kind of crazy. It’s been a while since I’ve played a round-robin this long. So, you know, one game at a time, one shot at a time, patience and just continue to stay loose.”

All of that was on display Tuesday night. Canada controlled most of the game after grabbing yet another first-end hammer — its fifth in six games — but, despite the stellar shooting from Jacobs, couldn’t pull away from Italy, which has performed below expectations in Moose Jaw.

A missed raise double-takeout from Retornaz in the fourth presented an open draw for a go-ahead deuce to Jacobs, and he made no mistake to give Canada a 3-1 lead.

An end later, Italy was in all sorts of trouble, facing three Canadian counters on Retornaz’s last stone, but the veteran coolly drew to the side of the button for a game-saving single.

Two ends later, it was the Canadians in dire straits. Kennedy’s raise takeout attempt instead removed two Canadian counting stones and left Italy sitting four. But this veteran group playing out of Calgary’s Glencoe Club didn’t panic, and Jacobs saved the end with a tap to score a crucial single point.

“Yeah, we got a pretty bad break on Marc’s runback,” said Jacobs. “I mean, we hit that just a hair too thick and then all of a sudden all our rocks are gone. They’re laying four and throwing a guard. It was pretty unbelievable.”

Stunningly, a similar scenario played out in the ninth; this time it was a Gallant runback that removed two Canadian stones and left Italy sitting three. But after a poorly placed guard from Italy, Kennedy delivered back-to-back double takeouts, leading to a blank and preserving Canada’s 4-2 lead.

“Some of our misses . . . the results turned out to be a little bit catastrophic,” said Jacobs. “But the rocks were thrown really well and that’s just how it goes sometimes. But we were able to stay positive, bounce back, make some good shots even when things didn’t look that great and grinded out the win.”

In the 10th, Jacobs capped his wonderful night of shooting with a game-ending double-takeout.

“Brad played awesome; all the guys played awesome,” said Gallant. “It was a pretty well curled game. I had a couple, maybe, mistakes, and the guys picked up for me really well, and that’s what kind of our team’s all about. If someone’s not making them all, then other guys are picking up the slack, and I thought they did a great job. And we stayed positive through it the whole time, and got a big win.”

Canada is back on the ice for a pair of games on Wednesday, taking on Norway’s Team Magnus Ramsfjell (4-2) at 9 a.m. (all times Central Standard) and Team Lukas Klima of the Czech Republic (4-3) at 7 p.m. 

In the other games Tuesday night, China was an 8-7 winner over Austria’s Team Mathias Genner (0-7); the Czechs needed an extra end to shade Team Korey Dropkin of the United States (3-3) 7-6; and Germany’s Team Marc Muskatewitz (3-4) turned back Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (2-5) 11-3.

Norway, Scotland, Switzerland’s Team Yannick Schwaller (4-2), Sweden’s Niklas Edin (4-2) and South Korea’s Team Hyojun Kim (0-6) all had byes on Tuesday night.

Round-robin play runs through to Friday, with the top six teams making the playoffs; no tiebreakers will be played, so ties for playoff spots will be broken based on head-to-head results, and if that doesn’t resolve the tie, then the pre-game Last-Shot Draw distances.

The top two teams from round-robin play will be seeded directly into the semifinals on Saturday at 3 p.m., while third will play sixth and fourth will play fifth in the qualifying-round games earlier on Saturday, at 9 a.m.

The winners of the qualifying-round games will advance to the semifinals. The semifinal winners will play for gold on Sunday at 3 p.m., with the semifinal losers battling for bronze Sunday at 9 a.m.

The 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship continues with draws Wednesday at 9 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

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

TSN and RDS2 will provide complete coverage of the 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship. CLICK HERE for the complete schedule.

For ticket information for the 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship, go to www.curling.ca/2025worldmen/tickets/.

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