Olympic champion Jen Dodds fired her final stone at the third end through a gap that did not really exist to send Scotland on their way to their second win at the World Mixed Doubles Championship in Korea, then immediately offered the credit to partner Bruce Mouat.
With the Scots leading 2-1 after the opening two ends, Dodds’ opposite number Vanessa Tonoli looked to have secured a steal at the third end with a well placed guard, directly blocking the route to the button.
However it had nudged an adjacent Scottish guard on the way through and newly crowned men’s world champion skip Mouat spotted the opportunity that Dodds was to take as she fired her takeout attempt down the ice.
Her stone deflected first off the Scottish guard, then off the Dutch one at the perfect angle to remove the shot stone from the house, without jamming on a Scottish stone at the back of the four foot, which also then counted to put them 4-1 ahead.
“The shot was called and made by Bruce,” she said afterwards, indicating that she had needed her partner to judge just how much she needed to sweep the stone to make the perfect connection.
Mouat was having none of that, though as he acknowledged the quality of the delivery.
“That shot definitely gave us the upper hand,” he said. 
“It was a great shot from Jen, probably the shot of the day and hopefully lots of people saw it.”
Facing one of his familiar foes in Wouter Goesgens, skip of the world’s number 14 ranked men’s team, Mouat knew it would be a tough battle, but they held onto that advantage to end in running out 7-4 winners.
“It was one of the games we had to kind of grind through it,” he said.
“We played pretty well, but we never managed to get a big lead, so it was really good to have one of those games where there’s still a bit of pressure but we were still in control.”
Results elsewhere meant that with only three matches played, no team in their pool has a 100 per cent record, while no fewer than seven have won two of three and long-time mixed doubles advocate Mouat noted that the depth of the competition demonstrates that the discipline is helping the global growth of the game.
“It’s quite early in the week to be starting to think about all that sort of stuff, but we’re playing well and we’ve got some tough games tomorrow in which we’ll have to come out and put in two more performances like we have in the last two games and we’ll see if we can get close to the top of the table,” he said.
“With the lower number of people in teams and each country having pretty good curlers now it’s obviously going to be pretty competitive and we’re going to see the countries that don’t necessarily have great men’s or women’s teams come through in this discipline and that’s been typical of mixed doubles so far.”
After a one-game day, they now face a more challenging schedule on the third day of action, meeting hosts Korea, as well as an Italy team skipped by Olympic champion Stefania Constantini.
“Both teams look like they’re playing well, so we’re just going to have to come out and play our best and hopefully get two more ‘w’s,” said Mouat.
WATCH LIVE games from Recast’s The Curling Channel.
World Mixed Doubles Curling Championships.
Schedule and Results:
Saturday 22 April
Session 1
Scotland – Canada 4-8
Session 3
Scotland – Denmark 7-1
Sunday 23 April
Session 5 – 6.00am
Scotland – Netherlands 7-4
Monday 24 April
Session 7 – 2.00am
Scotland – Korea
Session 9 – 10.00am
Scotland – Italy
Tuesday 25 April
Session 11 – 6.00am
Scotland – Estonia
Wednesday 26 April
Session 13 – 2.00am
Scotland – Hungary
Session 15 – 10.00am
Scotland – Australia
Thursday 27 April
Session 17 – 6.00am
Scotland – Czech Republic
Friday 28 April
Qualification Games – 2.00am
Semi Final – 10.00am
Saturday 29 April
BRONZE Medal Game 2.00am
GOLD Medal Game 6.00am
Scotland MD Team
Jen Dodds
Bruce Mouat
Greg Drummond (MD Team Coach)
Sheila Swan (Coach)
Image: WCF / Stephen Fisher
#curling #WMDCC2023
