The best curlers in the world have converged to Yorkton for this year’s Canadian Open for the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling.

Practices and the first draw took place Tuesday, with players looking forward to playing in front of a full Gallagher Centre.

Co-chair of the organizing committee Gerry Adam said this is the first time Yorkton’s hosted this event since it holding it back-to-back years in 2014 and 2015.

“When you do a couple in a row, everybody kind of goes ‘oh, it’s here again,’ but for the last year, everybody’s asking ‘when’s it coming back?’ ‘When’s it coming here?’ ‘Can I volunteer?’ Stuff like that, so everybody got really behind it.”

Adam said hosting this event helps them in planning future major curling events.

“We know the people well now with Sportsnet, so we always tell them ‘if you’re looking for a place to put an event in and you can’t find anybody, let us know and we’ll take a chance on it for sure.’”

Adam said the venue is an optimal place to host an event like this.

“There’s not too many places where you go where you’ve got all of these (things) under one roof kind of thing,” Adam said. “So a person on a cold day like today, you bring your vehicle in or get dropped off and you can stay here from eight in the morning until eight at night, you can get food, have a dance, have a drink, watch curling, then go home at 10 at night and then say ‘that was a great day.’”

Event passes are still available to those wanting to see the action live in Yorkton. However, for those who can’t make it, Sportsnet will be broadcasting games starting Thursday.