All of a sudden, Martin looks mortal

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2009 (6336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONCTON, N.B. — The first time? An aberration, maybe.

The second time? Well, it’s not a stretch to say there’s a pattern being developed at the Ford world men’s curling championship.

And if Kevin Martin wants to hang back-to-back gold medals around his neck, he’d better hope there’s not a third time because right now it sure looks like Scotland’s David Murdoch has got the upper hand on the team to which many had conceded the world title earlier in the week.

A second straight Scottish win in as many nights on Good Friday at the Moncton Coliseum — a 7-5 victory in the one-versus-two Page playoff game, on the heels of Thursday night’s round-robin 6-5 triumph that ended Martin’s Brier/world win streak at 23 games — landed Murdoch and his Lockerbie foursome in Sunday’s championship final.

Martin, third John Morris, second Marc Kennedy and lead Ben Hebert, meanwhile, must prevail in this afternoon’s semifinal against the winner of the morning’s Page three-four game between Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud and Switzerland’s Ralph Stoeckli.

Worst game

“That’s the worst game I think we’ve played as a team since I’ve been on the team. That was embarrassing,” said a disgusted Hebert. “Never have we ever played as bad like that as a team.

“Twenty per cent lower than we normally play. Embarrassing. It’s hard to stay on top of your game, I guess, all season. But we just didn’t play good. Lead through skip, we were bad.”

Well, depends on whom you ask. From Martin’s perspective, it’s a case that the team is throwing the rocks well, but the ice and granite are not performing as expected, and Martin’s frustration over that showed early and often as the Scots scored three in the second end to take control.

“I think we’re throwing the rocks well enough, but it’s tough to get the results, and it’s tough to play an offensive game out there,” said Martin, who had big scores in the seventh and ninth ends snuffed out by great Murdoch shots. “It was damn tough. We made David try a couple shots, and when we did, we were OK. He had trouble, too. It was tough sledding, that’s the honest truth.”

Hebert, though, wasn’t offering excuses.

“Zero,” he said. “Sure, maybe we didn’t have all our rocks perfectly matched, but we matched them up earlier today and they seemed OK. But I thought we were terrible.”

While Canada slogs it out in the semifinal for the second straight year — Murdoch also won last year’s one-two game before losing the final — the Scots get a chance to rest today, fully anticipating a third showdown with the Martin foursome.

“Hopefully we get a rematch with those guys on Sunday,” said Murdoch, the 2006 world champ. “They’re great champions, they’re the best team in the world. Still are. That would just be hard to believe. It would just be one of the most amazing things to win the gold-medal game and beat the best team in the world three times in a row, and we’re going to be trying hard for that. Hopefully it happens.”

Tiebreakers

Earlier Friday, Norway and the Swiss won tiebreakers to clinch the final two playoff berths after four teams finished the round-robin tied at 7-4

Ulsrud summoned his finest game of the week, curling a perfect 100 per cent in laying a 10-2 beating on John Shuster of the U.S.

“This is Team Norway for you,” said Ulsrud. “You never know what you’re going to get. You can get mediocre or you can get like today where the whole team made everything, you know.

“I wish I had the key for why (Thursday) we played mediocre and today, I think we can match everybody. I need to find the key to that answer.”

In the other game, the Swiss won their sixth straight, 8-7 over Germany’s Andy Kapp, since switching up the lineup to have second-rock thrower Markus Eggler call the game, with Stoeckli still throwing skip rocks.

While there’s still the matter of reaching the final, Hebert has no doubt in his mind that another showdown with the Scots would favour Canada.

“Dude, I don’t think we should ever lose to that team,” he said. “They’re a good team, but we don’t believe we should lose to any team. I hope we get another chance to play them.”

— Canwest News Service