News Masters

LLOYDMINSTER, Sask. — Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen rocketed into the Masters playoffs hammering Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud 8-2 in just five ends during Friday’s tiebreaker draw.

McEwen will now face No. 1 seed Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in Saturday’s quarterfinals.

It’s been a dicey week for McEwen, who rebounded from a 1-2 start in the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling major tournament with losses to Ulsrud and Brad Gushue and edged Scotland’s Kyle Smith 4-3 in the draw just prior in order to reach the tiebreaker stage.

“It hasn’t hurt us getting extra games,” McEwen said with a smile. “We’ve had the draw where we played kind of every night game, every 24 hours, so it was nice to have a back-to-back situation and get two wins in a short period of time. I think that’s a confidence booster heading into Saturday.”

Masters: Scores | Playoff Brackets | Draw Schedule | TV Schedule

McEwen had Ulsrud on the run right from the start sitting five in the first before the final skip stones. Ulsrud managed to do some serious damage control freezing at the back and forcing McEwen into making a shot for two as tempting as it was to go big.

“I missed a few draws this week and it was really nice to still make the draw for two even though we were kind of licking our chops for a shot for five or six,” McEwen said. “That was big making that draw even though it could have been a heck of a lot more. As Team Ulsrud said to me after there, ‘Oh it was almost a perfect force.’ Let the other time lie five and force them to one. That was a big turning point still, converting that into a two. It made a big difference in the flow of the game from that point on.”

The 2014 world champion Ulsrud hit for a single in the second and McEwen drew for one in the third to retake the two-point advantage.

McEwen made a sizzling runback with one of his own in the fourth that took out two opposite stones and sat for shot rock. The six-time Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling title winner gave full credit to sweepers Denni Neufeld and Matt Wozniak for pulling it off.

“Halfway I was really worried. I just pointed it a little bit,” McEwen said. “It’s the type of surface if you don’t have a really positive throw you’ll get burned. I thought I wasn’t going to get away with that but the boys really did well to hold it.”

Ulsrud looked to follow that up with a clean peel to blank the fourth, but his shooter stuck around in the rings to count for one.

The huge end that got away from McEwen came back in the fifth as Ulsrud’s team struggled again. McEwen had five in the house once more and blasted out Ulsrud’s stone to get his five-count and early handshakes.

“We already played Thomas in the round-robin, lost a one-point game there and lost a one-point game to Gushue,” McEwen said. “It’s kind of nice to get one back because we could have won one of those and been straight in [the playoffs]. It’s nice to get a little revenge on one of the teams that beat us already.”

“The ice was a little challenging today,” McEwen added. “It’s late in the day, there are only two games, so I thought we handled the conditions extremely well right from the first end. We had them on their heels and almost got five or six. I thought that was really good because in the past when we’ve been met with frosty heavy ice late in the day we’ve underperformed. It was nice to see us play really well in tonight’s game.”

Team Ulsrud third Torger Nergaard was nursing a back injury and stayed in the house as the skip handled his sweeping duties. They have a chance to represent Norway at the 2018 Winter Olympics if they qualify for the playoffs next month at the European Championship.

The rest of the men’s playoff bracket sees Gushue of St. John’s going up against Peter de Cruz of Switzerland, Sweden’s Niklas Edin clash with Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers and Calgary’s Kevin Koe collide with Winnipeg’s Jason Gunnlaugson. Watch Saturday at 5 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. MT on Sportsnet and online at Sportsnet NOW (Canada) or gsoc.yaretv.com (international).

Elsewhere, American Jamie Sinclair doubled up Russia’s Anna Sidorova 8-4 in the women’s tiebreaker.

Sidorova, who will represent Russia at the 2018 Winter Olympics, got out of the gate with a deuce in the first. The teams alternated singles in two and three before Sinclair took complete control making a soft tap for two in the fourth and stealing a pair in five when Sidorova hit and rolled away.

After Sidorova was held to another single in six, Sinclair all but iced the game with a three count in the seventh. Sidorova opted to play the eighth regardless, down by four points, and held in as long as she could until Sinclair ran her out of rocks.

“It was a tough field, it was definitely hard to get here, so super excited for the girls and proud of the team,” Sinclair said. “It’s been a grind, we started off 0-2, so we had to buckle down and we did what we had to do.”

Sinclair will take on top-seed Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg in the women’s quarterfinals (watch Saturday at 1 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. MT on CBC).

“That’ll be fun,” Sinclair said. “We’ve played her a couple times now so at least we have some experience under our belts.”

The rest of the quarterfinal draw has Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg against Casey Scheidegger of Lethbridge, Alta., Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson versus Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland and Scotland’s Eve Muirhead meeting Alina Paetz of Switzerland.

The Masters is the second event and first major of the 2017-18 Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling season and runs through to Sunday at Centennial Civic Centre.