Having suffered a painful defeat in the wee small hours of a Scottish morning, Team Mouat responded impressively in producing a powerful performance against play-off rivals Japan, closing out a 9-2 win in just six ends at the BKT Tires & OK Tire World Men’s Curling Championship in Ottawa.
Both teams had gone into the match with records of four wins and two losses, tied with hosts Canada in joint fourth place in the standings and the Japanese served notice that they were in fine form at the opening end where they left Scotland’s skip with an extremely difficult shot to get his team out of trouble.
Bruce Mouat duly worked out the angles to raise an opposition guard onto his own guard and promote it onto the Japanese shot stone, replacing it to save the situation and move ahead.
From that point he and Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan turned the tables and Japanese skip Riku Yanagisawa was unable to match that effort as he was forced into desperate measures at each of the next three ends, conceding steals at all of them.
The Japanese finally got on the scoreboard with a two at the fifth end, but the Scottish response was decisive as they piled further pressure onto Yanagisawa and when his last stone sailed through the house as he attempted to draw in behind cover, Mouat was left with a straightforward task to draw for a five.
While the final result gave the impression of a comfortable victory for the Scots, Mouat noted that the first end had been vital in setting the tone. 
“They are a very aggressive team and they love to have lots of stones in play, but we’re pretty similar, so there were always going to be a lot of stones to deal with,” he observed.
“At the first end we managed to get away with the one and then we put the pressure back on them in the second, third and fourth and managed to get those steals.”
The way they then finished it off, to give themselves additional time to recover and prepare for their second match of the day was also highly satisfying.
“It was a big score of five for us,” said Mouat.
“We set it up really well. Grant played a perfect hit and roll to create the chance for a multiple end, then we secured it with some really good shots after that.”
The win had been all the more important after the loss in their previous match, a re-match of this season’s European Championship final against Switzerland which had begun at midnight UK time, but Mouat had also been pleased with the quality of his team’s performance in losing to their European rivals.
“It was very important to bounce back today, because last night’s game was pretty tough,” he said.
“Obviously it was very close until the ninth end against Switzerland and it was a full battle, so to come out and win that game against a good Japanese team was crucial for us to keep our momentum going.
“That was a very well played game against Japan and I’m feeling really encouraged with the way we’re progressing in the competition.
“We’re starting to really step up a few gears.
“The first few games we were struggling a bit most of the time, but now we actually feel like we’re in a good flow.
“Last night’s game, although we lost, we actually produced our best performance and today just backed that up, so we’re very happy.
“We’ve had some tough games including last night where we played well but didn’t get the result, so it’s nice to see we’re on the upward trajectory and proved that this morning against the Japanese.”
As the play-off picture clarifies, the Scots know there can be no let up as they prepare to meet a Korean team that is playing better than their record of just one win and six losses suggests.
“It was really important to get a win there and bounce back, so hopefully another win tonight will start to see the field separating,” said Mouat.
“There are probably seven teams looking for the six spots right now, so it’s really important to get those wins against the teams that are up there as well.
“It will be a tough game against Korea.
“It looks like they’ve played well against the Canadians just now, so we’re going to have to come out and play similarly to the way we just did to win that game.”
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BKT Tires & OK Tire World Men’s Curling Championships.
Schedule and Results:
Saturday 1 April
Session 1
Scotland – Italy 7-4
Sunday 2 April
Session 3
Scotland – Turkiye 8-1
Session 4
Scotland – Sweden 4-7
Monday 3 April
Session 7
Scotland – Germany 8-6
Tuesday 4 April
Session 9
Scotland – USA 10-8
Session 11
Scotland – Switzerland 4-8
Wednesday 5 April
Session 12
Scotland – Japan 9-2
Session 14 00.00
Scotland – Korea
Thursday 6 April
Session 16 19.00
Scotland – Norway
Session 17 00.00
Scotland – Canada
Friday 7 April
Session 19 19.00
Scotland – Czech Republic
Session 20 00.00
Scotland – New Zealand
Saturday 8 April
Qualification Games 14.00
Semi Finals 00.00
Sunday 9 April
Bronze medal game 16.00
Gold medal game 21.00
Team Mouat
Bruce Mouat
Grant Hardie
Bobby Lammie
Hammy McMillan
Kyle Waddell (alternate)
Michael Goodfellow (Team Coach)
Ross Paterson (Coach)
Nigel Holl (Team Leader)
#curling #WMCC2023
Images: WCF/Celine Stucki
