TOM BREWSTER’S Aberdeen squad are out on their own at the top of the men’s Scottish Curling Championships round-robin table after recording their third win from three matches yesterday.
Alan Smith, of Kilmarnock, came within a foot of victory as his last at the tenth end, a raised take-out, removed the opposition counter but left the Brewster rock he had used marginally in second place.
The match went to an extra end, which Brewster, with advantage, won to take the match 7-6. The Aberdeen skip had kept his hopes alive earlier with the shot of the championship so far. At the seventh end, with no other options available, he went for a triple-shunt take-out that hit the mark and gave him two shots to draw level at 5-5.
In the women’s Golden League championship preliminaries, Kelly Wood, the Letham Grange player who finished fifth at the recent European Championships, inflicted the first defeat on Jackie Lockhart, of Aberdeen, beating her 8-4 in the tenth round to throw the title chase wide open.
There were sighs of relief all round as Lockhart had threatened to go unbeaten through all 14 rounds and take the title without having to play the finals.
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Lockhart also lost her next game, Claire Milne, of Perth, winning 8-4, while Wood went on to beat Rachael Simms’s Galleon side, the junior club from Kilmarnock, and join Lockhart at the top of the table.
“We’re certainly not playing our best at the moment,” Wood, whose victory over Simms came ribboned with some poor pressure give-away shots from her opponent, said. “But that’s encouraging. It means we have more to come.”
Yesterday brought disappointment for Rhona Martin. The Olympic champion had to quailfy for the Golden League this year after a disappointing 2003-04 season and, after losing out to Edith Loudon, a former national champion, lay sixth in the league with only the slimmest of chances of making the finals.
She requires three wins out of three while hoping that others suffer defeats. “We’re playing well enough,” Martin said, “but not well enough to win a match like that one.”
RESULTS: Third round (x — denotes extra end): D Edwards (Aberdeen) bt L Gray (Forest Hills) 8-4; G Muirhead (Atholl) bt E MacDonald (Inverness) 8-3 (9 ends); T Brewster (Aberdeen) bt A Smith (Galleon) 7-6 (x); H McMillan (Stranraer) bt P de Boer (Gogar) 8-3 (9 ends); R Kelly (Gogar) bt D Murdoch (Lockerbie) 5-4 (x).
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Standings: 1: Brewster 3 wins, 0 defeats; 2 equal: De Boer, Kelly, Murdoch, McMillan, Muirhead 2-1; 7 equal: Edwards, Smith 1-2; 9 equal: MacDonald, Gray 0-3.
Women’s Golden League championship preliminaries: Round 10: E Loudon (Perth) bt G Munro (Stranaer) 8-3 (9 ends); R Martin (Greenacres) bt S Kelsey (Gogar) 8-2 (9 ends); K Wood (Letham Grange) bt J Lockhart (Aberdeen) 8-4; C Milne (Perth) bt R Simms (Galleon-Kilmarnock) 7-5. Round 11: Milne bt Lockhart 8-4 (9 ends); Wood bt Simms 11-5; Loudon bt Martin 7-6 (x); Munro bt Kelsey 5-4.
Standings: 1 equal: Lockhart, Wood 9-2; 3 equal: Munro, Loudon, Milne 6-5; 6: Martin 4-7; 7 equal: Simms, Kelsey 2-9.