 Eve Muirhead and Bobby Lammie (PPA/Graeme Hart) became the first pair to secure a place in the play-offs at the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championships when they powered past Hungary 10-4, and they are determined to maintain their unbeaten record to the end of the round-robin stage of the competition. After claiming the hammer by winning the pre-match last stone draw challenge, they asserted themselves from the off, scoring a three at the opening end, and after forcing their opponents to take a single at the next, a two at the third gave them a comfortable advantage. The Hungarians rallied to score a two of their own at the fourth to close to just 5-3 down at the midway break, but high-class set-up play from Lammie resulted in Muirhead having the easiest of draws to secure a five at the fifth end, which effectively ended the contest. "It was our first goal coming here, to qualify for the play-offs, so to have secured that with a couple of games to go feels nice," said the Olympic gold medal-winning skip. She was particularly pleased with the way they dealt with changing conditions, partly as a result of the treatment of the stones being used for the championship, which were rubbed down the previous evening. "The ice was definitely a little different, but Bobby and I managed that really well," said Muirhead. "They rubbed the rocks last night, so that was always going to make a little change, but we managed it slightly better than them. "We got our stones in good spots, and whenever they made a mistake, we capitalised on it and just put them under a lot of pressure." Their next target is to secure one more win on the final day of round-robin competition to guarantee an automatic spot in the semi-finals. The first of those matches is against Turkey, who sit bottom of the Group B table having won just one of their seven matches so far, while the second is against Spain, who sit second from the bottom with only two wins. "We want to keep the momentum going, though, because when it gets to the crucial part of the week, that's when you want to step it up a little bit," said Muirhead. "So, I think we just keep doing what we're doing. We're managing things really well out there and playing key shots when it matters, and we just want to keep enjoying it." |
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Brendan Bottcher (photo: Stan Fong) is moving on from now former teammates Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert, announced Tuesday.
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