Stoughton defeats China for 10th straight win

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This article was published 07/04/2011 (5490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

REGINA — Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton will play Scotland’s Tommy Brewster here Friday night for a berth in the 2011 World Men’s Curling Championship final.

Brewster locked up second place Thursday morning — and a rendezvous with Team Canada’s Stoughton in Friday’s page playoff 1 vs 2 game — with a 6-1 thrashing of France’s Thomas Dufour that improved Scotland to 8-2 with one round-robin game still to play Thursday night against USA.

The winner of Canada-Scotland on Friday night will advance straight to Sunday’s world championship final, while the loser will get a second chance in Saturday’s semi-final.

“Can’t wait,” Brewster said of his looming date with Stoughton. “That’s what it’s all about — full house, Canada. I play this game to play the best teams — that’s it. And they’re one of the best teams in the world. We’ll go out there and give it our all.”

Canada thrashed Scotland 7-3 in the round-robin on Tuesday night, but Canada third Jon Mead said the Scots will be formidable. “They’ve obviously earned it. They’ve played very well. I think they’ve won quite a few games by a lot of points, so they’re obviously playing well.

“We’re going to have to work really hard to get through that one.”

Canada clinched first place on Wednesday and are simply going through the motions here on the final day of the round-robin. They defeated China’s Yan Song Yi 5-4 Thursday morning to improve to 10-0 in a strange game that saw China take a highly unconventional approach that seemed aimed only at taking Canada to a tenth end, with no regard for the inevitable result of Stoughton having hammer in the final frame.

“We kind of lost interest out there, just because it was such a boring game and they weren’t going at it,” said Stoughton. “They played to get to ten and they got to 10.

“I’d rather lose 10-2 and call the right game then lose 3-2 and call a bad game. It’s kind of disappointing they’d do that.”

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Canada concludes the round-robin Thursday evening against Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud.

In addition to winning his second world curling title, Stoughton also has a chance this week to become the first team since 1995 to go undefeated at a world men’s curling championship.

In other action Thursday morning, Germany defeated Denmark 7-3 and Sweden defeated Korea 8-4.

France, Sweden and Germany are all tied for third place at 6-4 heading into the afternoon draw. Norway and Switzerland are also still in the playoff hunt with 5-4 records.

Only the top four teams advance to the weekend playoff round.