Jones ousts Homan in Players’ Championship quarterfinals
TORONTO — Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones ended Ottawa’s Rachel Homan’s sensational season with a 6-5 win in the Players’ Championship quarterfinals Saturday.
Homan won her first career Grand Slam of Curling title in November at the Rogers Masters and had a chance to earn a $100,000 bonus if she had swept the two women’s events. Her team also captured their first national championship at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and earned bronze at the worlds.
Although Homan opened with the hammer, she was unable to convert having to blank the first and concede a steal of one in the second. Homan settled for a single in the third to tie it and the teams continued to play cat-and-mouse matching deuces in four and five and again in six and seven. Jones, a record four-time Players’ women’s champion, held the hammer coming home knotted 5-5 and scored the winning single.
Jones will next play Sweden’s Margaretha Sigfridsson, who scored three in the first and rolled out from there to an 8-3 victory over Edmonton’s Laura Crocker 8-3 to advance to the evening semifinals.
Elsewhere, defending Players’ champion Stefanie Lawton of Saskatoon edged Anna Sidorova 8-7 in an extra end after the Russian skip rallied from a four-point deficit to send it into overtime. Lawton counted three in the sixth to grab a 7-3 lead, but Sidorova bounced back with a deuce in seven and a steal of two in eight.
Lawton will face Scotland’s Eve Muirhead after the reigning world champ downed Renee Sonnenberg of Grande Prairie, Alta., 8-6.
The women’s final is on tap for Sunday morning.
