Team Heidt’s key to success in winning the World Curling Tour Classic at Estevan’s Power Dodge Curling Centre on Monday was only allowing an opponent to score two points in one playoff end until the tournament was basically theirs for the taking.
Josh Heidt, skip of Kerrobert’s Team Heidt, said heading into the last end of the championship game up 5-4 with the hammer over Winnipeg’s Team Lyburn gave them the advantage, so their opponent played very aggressively for the steal. He said Lyburn was throwing up centre guards to try and block off the pin area, but Team Heidt lead Dustin Kidby made two very nice shots to get the win.
“The rule is you’re not allowed to hit the first four rocks of the end if they’re in front of the house, so you play a little soft weight shot where you move it out of the way but you don’t kill it and it’s a tough shot,” said Heidt, whose team, which also includes third Brock Montgomery and second Matt Ryback, won the game 6-4 after eight ends. “It’s kind of becoming routine for the good teams and he made both of them. It’s called a tick shot and he made both and it set it up really nice for me to have an easy shot on my last one.”
Jason Gunnlaugson, skip of the three-man Team Lyburn due to an injury to regular skip William Lyburn, said they were trying to push the envelope in the eighth end to see if Team Heidt would make a mistake, but they hit all their shots and won the championship as a result. Team Lyburn, which was also comprised of Richard Daneault and Braden Zawada, entered the seventh end down 5-2 before making the late push for the win.
“We had a good shot for a two in the seventh end,” said Gunnlaugson. “They really outplayed us most of the way, but we made it close in the second last end and then in the last end they held on.”
Team Lyburn started the championship game with hammer for the early advantage, but Team Heidt held them to one point after two ends before following up with two points of their own after three ends to put them in control. From there Team Heidt played a solid game and started to pour on the pressure and made them look at four or five rocks on their last rocks to never give them a chance to score multiple points.
Josh Heidt said the only opportunity they gave Team Lyburn to score multiple points was in the seventh when they were already up by three, so it wasn’t much of a big deal. He said that is a completely acceptable situation to be in, letting the opposition have two when they have the hammer coming home with a one-point lead.
“If you can hold a team to five points or less you’ll win a lot of games and here we held them to four points,” said Heidt, whose team went 3-2 in the qualifying rounds Nov. 27 to 29 before beating Team Bailey 6-1 in the quarterfinal Sunday evening and Team Joanisse 6-2 in the semifinal Monday morning to book their ticket to the championship. “We play a little more defensive (and) try and hold the other team from scoring points as opposed to being aggressive and trying to score points. We play more of the defensive side and let the points come to us. It worked out for us.”
Pauline Ziehl Grimsrud, manager of the Estevan Curling Club, said the championship match between Team Heidt and Team Lyburn capped off a busy weekend that saw a mixture of great curling by the 22 teams from British Columbia, Manitoba, Sweden, Switzerland and Saskatchewan as well as good crowds pass through the Power Dodge Curling Centre to take everything in. She said the World Curling Tour Classic in Estevan has grown from an initial 16 teams three years ago and the diversity of teams they’ve seen enter the event this year is a good building block to work from.
“We’re committed to do it for two more years for sure,” said Ziehl Grimsrud. “That’s the plan and probably longer if we continue to have this success.”
