Work smarter, not harder?
Bruce Korte and his Saskatoon-based rink took that message to heart Monday morning, scoring five points in the first end en route to a 9-2 win for Canada over Slovenia at the senior men’s world curling championship in Switzerland.
Korte, third Darrell McKee, second Kory Kohuch and lead Rory Golanowski improved to 2-0 with the win, tied for top spot with Latvia in the Group A table.
After giving up the five-ender, Slovenia replied with a single in the second end but Korte scored a deuce in the third end and then stole single points in each of the next two ends to lead 9-1 after five.
Only able to score one with hammer in the sixth end, Slovenia conceded the match and dropped to 1-1.
“It’s interesting because we in Canada here work 40 years to get to worlds, and we come here and a lot of these teams have been here four, five, seven times, and so it’s just a testament to how good Canada is because some of the teams you play, they don’t quite have the pedigree Canada has and we’re just kind of making our normal shots and then you get a few misses,” Korte said on a Monday morning phone call from Geneva.
Canada’s next game is scheduled for Tuesday at midnight (or 8 a.m. Geneva time) against the undefeated Latvians, led by skip Ansis Regza.
On a neighbouring sheet, as Canada was having its way with Slovenia, Latvia was doing the same with a 15-5 win over Nigeria, which Korte defeated in his rink’s opening match at worlds.
“We did talk to Randy Bryden,” Korte said, explaining the team’s mindset through the rest of the group stage. “He was there last year obviously, won worlds, great team. We’ve played them year after year and the round robin pool we’re in, we realized it’s probably not going to be as competitive as it’s going to get in the qualification round, so we’re just trying to emulate some of the tougher shots we know we’re going to have to make eventually because we know it’s going to get a lot tougher real soon.”
Despite the lopsided results so far though, Korte emphasized that the camaraderie element of the game remains alive and well too.
“One of the fun things we did was we made little shooter glasses with our team’s emblem and the Curling Canada logo, and we have a shot with (the opposing team) after every game because we’re trying to make some friends and help grow the game at the same time,” he said.
