OGDEN, Utah — It was a game to forget for Canada’s Matt Dunstone at the World Men’s Curling Championship on Saturday afternoon.
Dunstone and his rink of third Colton Lott, second E.J. Harnden and lead Ryan Harnden fell behind early and would be unable to stage a comeback in an 8-3 seven-end loss to Scotland’s Ross Whyte during draw four action in Ogden, Utah.
It was the first win for Whyte, third Robin Brydone, second Craig Waddell and lead Euan Kyle after dropping a pair of games on Friday. Dunstone falls to 2-1.
Scotland had the hammer in the first end, and Dunstone was left with a big weight angle double takeout with his last shot to prevent Whyte from scoring a pair. He’d only get one, Whyte would hit and stick on his last and Scotland had a 2-0 lead.
Scotland sat first and second shot in the four foot at Canada’s final stone of the second end, leaving Dunstone a draw to bite the button for one. Despite some hard work by the Harndens, the shot would stop a couple inches short, and Whyte had the steal.
Dunstone made an outstanding angle raise double takeout with his first shot of the third to sit two, but Whyte would come back with a great hit and roll into the four foot to regain shot rock. Dunstone attempted a raise takeout with his final shot but came in thin, putting the raise through the back of the house and giving Scotland another steal for a 4-0 lead.
Things were looking good for Canada until Whyte’s first shot of the end, when he got a whole bunch of stone moving on a hit and left Canada sitting only one in the house. Dunstone would get things done the rest of the end, though, and he’d had a draw to the eight foot for the deuce.
Canada sat a pair on the button with Whyte sitting third and fourth shot top and back eight foot on Scotland’s last shot of the fifth, and he’d made a great runback double while holding the shooter for three and a 7-2 edge.
The sixth was far more straightforward, with Dunstone facing four Scotland rocks around the house with his final rock. He’d nose hit a Whyte counter in the four foot to take one and make it a four-point game.
Dunstone sat two on the button at Whyte’s last shot in the seventh, and the Scottish skip would get a tap back to score one and bring things to an early end.
Results from the morning draw saw the United States’ John Shuster take a 9-8 win over Korea’s Changmin Kim, Switzerland’s Marco Hoesli steal points in four ends in an 8-1 win over Norway’s Andreas Haarstad, Sweden’s Niklas Edin defeat Italy’s Stefano Spiller 9-4 and Germany’s Marc Muskatewitz down Czechia’s Lukas Klima 8-7 in an extra end.
Other results from the afternoon draw included Sweden downing China’s Xiaoming Xu 9-2 in six ends, Korea defeating Poland 7-4 and Czechia stealing single points the final three ends to down Norway 6-5
Standings after four draws are as follows:
Sweden (Edin) 3-0
Germany (Muskatewitz) 2-0
Japan (Yamaguchi) 2-0
Switzerland (Hoesli) 2-0
Canada (Dunstone) 2-1
China (Xu) 2-1
United States (Shuster) 1-1
Czechia (Klima) 1-2
Korea (Kim) 1-2
Scotland (Whyte) 1-2
Italy (Spiller) 1-2
Poland (Stych) 1-2
Norway (Haarstad) 0-3
Canada also has a single game on Sunday, as they take on the United States at 2 p.m. The game will be broadcast on TSN, and you can follow along with all the scores and stats at livescores.worldcurling.org.
