Eight Ends: Hard work paying off for Whyte, Hasselborg
GUELPH, Ont. — Ross Whyte has stepped out of the shadow and into the spotlight.
Bruce Mouat has reigned at the top in Scottish men’s curling, and the men’s division in general, skipping the No. 1 ranked team in the world and winning three consecutive Grand Slam of Curling championships this season.
Whyte has served as Mouat’s alternate in the past, most notably at the 2021 world championship and 2022 Olympic Games, and while he was once the learner, now he’s the master — the Masters champion that is.
Team Whyte capped an “unreal” tournament with a 5-4 victory over Canada’s Team Brad Jacobs in Sunday’s men’s final at the WFG Masters. The crew of Whyte, Robin Brydone, Duncan McFadzean and Euan Kyle lost just once at the start of the week to Team Marc Muskatewitz before catching fire and rattling off six straight wins.
The Masters has been special for Whyte: First Grand Slam appearance (2021), first Grand Slam final (2023) and now first Grand Slam title. It’s obviously a coincidence considering all three tournaments were held in different cities, and even at different times of the year, but it’s still funny how that worked out.
“It’s unreal,” Whyte said after the win. “This is what you’re hoping for your whole career, getting to these points and winning those massive games. Thankfully, we’ve done it today and got over the line on our second try.”
It’s also interesting Whyte went last in the draft to determine the pools for round-robin play. Mr. Irrelevant? Not exactly. Here that meant the other teams either preferred playing someone else or were trying their best to avoid having to play Team Whyte. We don’t blame them if the latter was the case, especially with how the week turned out.
Not to brag or anything, but we did suggest Whyte could win his first Grand Slam of Curling title this season.
FIRST END: Some other by-the-numbers cool stats for your consideration following Whyte’s win:
• Fourth Scottish skip to win a Grand Slam of Curling title after Bruce Mouat and Ross Paterson in the men’s division plus Eve Muirhead on the women’s side.
• Scottish teams have won a combined 15 Grand Slam of Curling men’s and women’s titles, good for second on the all-time nations list. Scotland still has a ways to go before catching Canada, which leads the way by a wide margin with 143.
• Fourth-youngest men’s skip to win a Grand Slam title at age 26. Mouat holds that record, winning the 2017 National men’s title at age 23. Muirhead is the overall leader as she was 22 (one day shy of turning 23) when she captured the 2013 Players’ Championship women’s title.
SECOND END: The hard work is also paying off for Anna Hasselborg and her Swedish squad as they defeated Canada’s Team Rachel Homan 7-5 in the WFG Masters women’s final.
It was the eighth Grand Slam title for Hasselborg, Sara McManus, Agnes Knochenhauer and Sofia Mabergs but their first since the 2022 Players’ Championship.
Hasselborg described the first two seasons of this Olympic cycle as “maintenance” for the team and last year was a circus — they called it Circus Hasselborg themselves — with young children, partners and support along for every event. The circus has left town this season and the team is dialled in.
“We have not been focusing on developing so much,” Hasselborg said after Saturday’s semifinals. “We’ve not had that motivation or time and energy. I think this season we really amped up and we’ve put in more hours in everything we have done and definitely more practising hours both in the gym and on the ice.
“It’s beautiful when it comes together and it shows in the results because it not always shows, even though you put the hours in, but it definitely has shown. It shows in the team’s confidence and it shows in the technique and it shows in the power of the sweeping. I’ve never seen Sofia, Agnes or Sara sweep this well. It’s insane. I’m so proud of the work that we’ve done and I’m proud of where we’re at.”
The team has been on a momentum run since November, earning silver at the European Championships and finishing runner-up to Homan in the KIOTI National.
“It’s a new thing coming from having all the families with us last year and then especially for myself to not have the family with me at all, so it is a big change,” McManus said earlier in the week. “It took us a while just getting to that, just being normal people with no kids around, to be honest. Now we’re really enjoying curling and it’s a lot of fun. We’re even enjoying the time off ice being around each other too, so I think we’re at a really good spot.”
You can sense that too as the team came out draped in Swedish flags for their friendly rivalry match against Team Silvana Tirinzoni. The skip teased selecting Homan during the playoff draft for the quarterfinals while wearing a Team Homan shirt. Hasselborg also captured the coveted Grand Slam of Karaoke championship belt on the eve of the final.
As for what comes next, Hasselborg said the team is going to continue to put in work.
“We’re not satisfied, like, we’re happy but we’re not content,” said Hasselborg, whose team holds a 13-1 record over the past two Grand Slam events. “We just want to continue to improve and just continue to move from here.”
THIRD END: We ran out of adjectives to describe Homan’s season last year, what makes you think we finally found the words when the Ottawa-based club continues to climb?
Homan has reached all four Grand Slam women’s finals this season, sweeping back-to-back titles at the Co-op Canadian Open and KIOTI National. How does that stack up to Homan’s season at this point last year? Let’s compare the numbers.
| 2023-24 | Team Homan as of Jan. 20 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|
| 38-5 (.884 PCT) | Total Win-Loss Record | 45-4 (.918 PCT) |
| 20-5 (.800 PCT) | GSOC Win-Loss Record | 24-4 (.857 PCT) |
| 7 | Events Played | 7 |
| 6 | Finals Played | 7 |
| 5 | Titles Won | 5 |
| 2 | GSOC Titles Won | 2 |
Conclusion: Mind blown.
FOURTH END: Sunday marked five years to the day since Jacobs last won a Grand Slam title and the WFG Masters is the last one on the list the skip needs to scratch off to complete a career Grand Slam. While that would have made a nice storyline, it was not to be.
It was also the second consecutive Grand Slam final for Jacobs, who finished runner-up to Mouat during last month’s KIOTI National and holds a 12-2 record over the past two events in the series.
Not that Jacobs, Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert need any more confidence, but that should give them confidence heading into the Brier in a few weeks. Jacobs has to be the favourite if you were to power rank the field (even with more than half the field still to be determined).
FIFTH END: The early returns on E.J. Harnden joining Matt Dunstone’s team are positive.
Counting the Red Deer Curling Classic in November where Harnden spared, Dunstone holds a 22-3 record with two titles on tour plus a pair of semifinal finishes.
Perhaps Harnden, who parted ways with Team Brad Gushue in October, is just a better fit on Team Dunstone playing alongside his brother, lead Ryan Harnden, once more on the front end. The Brush Bros. won a Brier title, Olympic gold and seven Grand Slam championships together when they played with their cousin Jacobs. Reunited? It feels so good.
SIXTH END: Brad Gushue has been the model of consistency in the Grand Slam of Curling that it’s rare when things go awry for his team.
Just how rare? Since Mark Nichols rejoined at third ahead of the 2014-15 season, you can count on one hand the number of times Team Gushue has missed the playoffs in the series: five times.
Even then, the WFG Masters was the first time Team Gushue went winless altogether in a Grand Slam since the 2006 Players’ Championship. Now that’s insane.
Gushue selected fourth in the snake draft to determine the round-robin pools and his back-to-back picks backfired as he lost to Team Magnus Ramsfjell and Team Muskatewitz. The game against Ramsfjell was a close one that came down to Ramsfjell holding the hammer in the eighth end and making a shot-of-the-week candidate to score the winning single.
Although Gushue opened with the hammer against Muskatewitz, he gave up back-to-back single steals in the second and third ends and was just a tad heavy on the draw with the last shot of the game to concede the winning point in the 4-3 decision.
The 15-time Grand Slam winner then fell to eventual champion Whyte. Considering Whyte went last in the draft, Gushue didn’t pick him so much as he was stuck with him.
Gushue’s round-robin finale was a crossover game against Team Yannick Schwaller, and he mixed things up with second Brendan Bottcher holding the broom in the house during skip stones and Nichols picking up extra sweeping duties. Seeing as how they were already eliminated from playoff contention, why not switch it up and see how that works?
Keep in mind, Bottcher is still relatively new to the team, having just joined in October and is playing a new position after skipping his entire career. Also, recency bias shouldn’t cloud the fact Team Gushue earned silver at the Pan Continental Curling Championships and finished runner-up in the Co-op Canadian Open during its first two events with Bottcher in the lineup.
Still, Gushue will need to find a way to change course swiftly with the Brier, and the opportunity to win a fourth consecutive Canadian men’s championship, up next.
SEVENTH END: A new rule was tested during the WFG Masters where teams lost the hammer if they blanked consecutive ends. Although one event is a small sample size, here’s how it played out.
The rule itself didn’t kick in as no one blanked consecutive ends but that’s because teams opted to score a point since they were losing the hammer regardless. Jacobs (second end of the men’s final) and Einarson (sixth end of round-robin game against Homan) are just two examples where both drew for a single while facing one opposing stone in the house, much to the disappointment of the peel bananas.
As we looked at double blank ends through the previous three Grand Slam events this season, they were more frequent in the men’s division (17 times total) versus the women’s (three), so we’ll stick with keeping them separated.
Both divisions featured the same number of blanks at 30 each. Here’s how the following end played out.
| Next end after a blank | Men’s Division | Women’s Division |
|---|---|---|
| Scored two or more points | 12 | 8 |
| Single | 10 | 13 |
| Steal | 7 | 8 |
| Ran opponent out of rocks | 1 | 1 |
Keep in mind that this is just a surface-level analysis. A deeper dive is needed to separate how many of those singles were forced in the traditional sense (i.e. the team without the hammer had multiple rocks in the house) versus situations where the team with the hammer would have blanked if they could such as the Jacobs and Einarson examples above. In other words, how effective was the rule in preventing consecutive blanks?
Will the rule return for another trial run? Time will tell.
EIGHTH END: Another intriguing stat from the week is the win/loss record for teams that started with the hammer: 30-11 in the men’s division and 29-12 in the women’s division, or 59-23 (.720 PCT) combined.
Whyte’s lone loss to Muskatewitz was the only game where he didn’t start with the hammer. Team Whyte didn’t just win the draw-to-the-button shootout in its remaining three round-robin games, the club covered the pinhole every time. Being that sharp out of the gate helps set the tone for the match and Whyte converted with deuces to open the scoring in all three round-robin wins, too.
Of course, teams still have to execute, but winning those pre-game draw-to-the-button shootouts to determine the hammer is super important.
EXTRA END: After four events in four months, the Grand Slam of Curling will now take a bit of a break before returning for the Players’ Championship, April 8-13, at Toronto’s Mattamy Athletic Centre.
Only 12 men’s and 12 women’s teams receive invitations to the exclusive event, so it’s worth keeping tabs on the year-to-date world rankings until the March 11 cutoff date. While some teams are safe, those on the bubble might be scrambling for points between now and then.
That’s not the end of the season though. The Curling Group announced last week the inaugural TCG All-Star event will take place immediately after the Players’ Championship, April 15-16, at Tee Line Nashville. The two-day event will feature a celebrity pro-am, a skills competition and an All-Star skins game with fans having the opportunity to vote for their favourite curlers to compete. It should be fun times to end the season leading into the summertime and an intense Olympic year on the horizon.
