Scotland’s Team Paterson endured a difficult second day at the LGT World Men’s Curling Championships as they lost both their matches, going down 9-6 to Korea, then 7-4 to Norway.
As skip Ross Paterson subsequently acknowledged, there was a contrast to the pattern of the matches, but as the only member of the quartet to have participated in a World Championships previously, his message to teammates Kyle Waddell, Duncan Menzies and Craig Waddell, was to draw on the experience of their first few matches at the start of what was always going to be a rigorous test.
“Today’s been a tough day at the office and it was disappointing to have been on the wrong end of both games,” he said. 
“It’s still early in the competition and we’re still learning the ice on the different sheets we’re playing and obviously don’t want to lose any games, but it’s important that we learn from the losses we’ve had today and build on that for the games we’ve got for the rest of the week, because it’s a long week.
“We’ve had plenty of positives so far from the games we’ve played. We’ve lost games but still played plenty of good curling.”
Losing the last stone draw and so allowing their opponents the advantage of starting with the hammer in the first match of the day, they did well to counter Korea’s two at the opening end by matching that at the second, but after a blanked third end their opponents regained the upper hand with another two at the fourth.
After reducing the leeway at the fifth they came out well in the second half by stealing a shot at the sixth end, forcing their opponents TO take just one at the sixth, then claiming a two at the eighth to edge ahead for the first time, but another two for Korea at the ninth re-established their advantage and they managed to steal a two at the last for the win.
“Against Korea it was back and forth,” said Paterson.
“We had a slow first five ends and we addressed that at the half-time break, recognising that we had to be collectively sharper.
“In the second half I felt that we’d done enough to win the game, but their skip played an excellent draw in the ninth end for two and at the 10th end we just didn’t quite manage to get ourselves over the line. That was disappointing because we had bounced back really well in the second half.”
Winning the last stone draw against Norway later in the day, as they had in setting up their opening day win against Italy, they made a near ideal start, blanking the opening end, then scoring two at the second to have both the lead and the prospect of holding the hammer at the even ends.
They then forced their opponents to take one at the third, reinforcing their advantage, but the momentum swung at the fourth end when Paterson was left with a tough draw to prevent a steal of two with both Norwegian stones biting the one foot and he was marginally heavy with his attempt.
The Scots levelled the match going into the midway break, but after forcing the Norwegians at the sixth end, they then conceded another steal at the seventh and after they extended their advantage to 7-4 with a two at the ninth, they efficiently ran their opponents out of stones at the last.
“The game against Norway was almost the flip reversal,” said Paterson. 
“We wanted to start the game the same as we’d finished against Korea and we did that.
“We won the draw shot to get the hammer and got the two on the board at the opening end, then had a better first half.
“But we just struggled with the ice conditions and didn’t make enough shots collectively and if we do that against any team this week we’re probably going to get punished for it.”
They have the morning of the third day to re-group before facing consecutive matches against Denmark and Germany in bidding to get back among the play-off contenders.
“We’ve now got to come out tomorrow and be as sharp as we can,” said the skip.
“We’ve got two games back-to-back, so the focus is purely on getting the next win on the board, playing as well as we can and it’s a two win day that we’re looking for to get back to where we want to be in the standings.”
Team Scotland
Ross Paterson (vice-skip)
Kyle Waddell (skip)
Duncan Menzies
Craig Waddell
Euan Kyle (alternate)
Broadcast games on The Curling Channel in partnership with Recast
Tuesday 5 April
22:00 — Scotland v United States
Friday 8 April
17:00 — Scotland v Canada
19:00 — Scotland v Switzerland
Saturday 9 April
03:00 — Qualification Game 1
22:00 — Qualification Game 2
03:00 — Semi-final 1 (TBD)
03:00 — Semi-final 2 (TBD)
Sunday 10 April
19:00 — Bronze medal game
00:00 midnight — Gold medal game
Schedule and results:
Saturday 2 April
Scotland – Italy 5-4
Sunday 3 April
Scotland – Korea 6-9
Scotland – Norway 4-7
Monday 4 April
Scotland – Denmark
Scotland – Germany
Tuesday 5 April
Scotland – USA
Scotland – Finland
Wednesday 6 April
Scotland – Czech Republic
Thursday 7 April
Scotland – Netherlands
Scotland – Sweden
Friday 8 April
Scotland – Canada
Scotland – Switzerland
Saturday 9 April
Qualifications games
Semi finals
Sunday 10 April
Bronze medal game
Gold medal game
#curling #WMCC2022
