MOOSE JAW -- And then there were two.
Scotland’s David Mouat and China’s Xiaoming Xu moved into a tie for first place on Tuesday afternoon at the World Men’s Curling Championship, thanks to each picking up a win during Draw 10 at Temple Gardens Centre in Moose Jaw.
Mouat and his rink of third Grant Hardie, second Bobby Lammie and lead Hammy McMillan improved to 5-1 with a 9-7 victory over Italy’s Joel Retornaz, while China’s Xu, third Xueqing Fei, second Zhiyu Wang and lead Zhichao Li defeated Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell 8-6 to also hit the five win mark.
The two rinks snapped what was a five-way tie for first at 4-1 heading into the draw, with Canada’s Brad Jacobs part of that group.
For Mouat, it was a solid rebound after a tough loss to Czechia the night before, but a close battle between two teams who have done plenty of winning at Worlds in the past.
The two teams exchanged deuces in the second and third ends, and after Mouat was held to one in the fourth, Retornaz took a 4-3 lead with another two in the fifth. Scotland got that deuce right back in the sixth, but Italy would regain the lead with two more in the eighth for a 6-5 edge.
That set the stage for the pivotal ninth end, where Mouat would score four to completely take control of the contest coming home, and Retornaz would only be able to pick up one in the 10th, giving Scotland the 9-7 win.
Xu got off to a great start in a battle of 4-1 teams, scoring three in the second, holding Ramsfjell to one in the third and tacking on two more in the fourth for a 5-1 lead. The teams exchanged singles the next two frames, and Norway would start to claw their way back into it with a deuce in the seventh,
China replied with one in eight, and another Norway two points the following end suddenly saw things close coming home. Xu would get the job done with the hammer, though, scoring one for the 8-6 victory.
Other results from Draw 10 saw Germany’s Marc Muskatewitz turn in a dominant performance to defeat Korea’s Hyojun Kim 11-2, while Sweden’s Niklas Edin bounced back from his morning draw loss to Canada to take a 6-4 win over Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller.
Standing after Draw 10 are as follows:
China (Xu) 5-1
Scotland (Mouat) 5-1
Canada (Jacobs) 4-1
Norway (Ramsfjell) 4-2
Switzerland (Schwaller) 4-2
Sweden (Edin) 4-2
United States (Dropkin) 3-2
Czechia (Klima) 3-3
Germany (Muskatewitz) 2-4
Italy (Retornaz) 2-4
Japan (Yamaguchi) 2-4
Austria (Genner) 0-6
Korea (Kim) 0-6
The top six teams advance to the playoff round beginning Saturday morning.
Canada returns to the ice in the Tuesday evening draw in another tough contest against former Worlds bronze medalist Retornaz, with that contest taking place at 7 p.m.
Be sure to follow along with SportsCage.com’s live blog, and you can check out all the up to the minute scores on www.worldcurling,org.
