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Steve Laycock believes you couldn’t come up with a better storybook tale if his team happens to win the Canadian Open.

The Yorkton-born Laycock returns to his hometown for the third stop on the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling series this season with his sights set on capturing his first career major title.

Laycock, who now resides in Saskatoon, said his team has had a pretty successful year so far on the World Curling Tour (they just captured the Weatherford Curling Classic title Monday) but they’re still looking for their big breakout moment and he hopes it will come at the Canadian Open.

“You couldn’t script it any better than that,” he said. “To finally win your first Grand Slam in your hometown, I would love to see that happen.”

Laycock said it’ll be nice to get the opportunity to play the role of hometown hero and compete in front of family, friends and fans.

“The amount of attention and recognition you get locally from having some of your fans actually seeing you in person and just some of the media coverage that comes with that too is great for the exposure of our team,” Laycock said. “As a young team that’s something that we’re definitely still looking for so it’s fantastic all around.”

Fans have been able to keep up with Laycock as the team streams their games online. Laycock said it was lead Dallan Muyres’ idea and it has helped both their fans and the team.

“We have a record of all of our games, we can go back and review. We talk about strategy, we talk about things we need to work on, maybe sweeping techniques and things like that,” Laycock said. “The other thing is it’s really nice for our fans and sponsors. For the fans, being able to keep track of us and actually tune into our games and for the sponsors, getting that extra recognition and we have that many more times where people are logging in and seeing our logos. I think all around it’s been really good and we’ve had good feedback about it.”

Laycock has come a long way from his early days learning how to curl in a family league in Saltcoats, Sask. Back then Laycock would throw his pair of lead stones and then head inside immediately because it was too cold to stay on the ice.

“That first year of curling I wasn’t big into sweeping so maybe it’s a good thing I ended up being a skip,” Laycock said with a laugh. “That was my thing, I would just throw a couple of rocks.

“I started at a really young age in a family league and at that stage, being that age, it was really tough to follow along with what was going on out there. But within a couple years my dad was already letting me skip the family team so I think that really helped fast track my learning and love for the game. I definitely had a good upbringing that way.”

Laycock, the 2003 world junior champion, has won provincial titles while throwing lead, third and fourth stones and said playing various positions over the years has improved his perspective of the game quite a bit.

“I’ve obviously spent the most amount of time skipping, having done it throughout juniors and probably over half of my men’s career now, but having that perspective of what the front-enders are thinking, what sort of focus you have when you’re playing different positions, it helps me understand what my teammates are thinking and ways I can help them get better,” Laycock said. “I think it’s done nothing but help me.”

For now, Laycock is just waiting for that banner moment to occur.

“Overall, we’re really happy with how (the season) started,” Laycock said. “Hopefully over the next few events we can finish one off and get a win.”