![]() Sweden's Isabella Wrana (photo: Anil Mungal, GSOC) broke through with a 6-5 win over Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni in the Princess Auto Players' Championship Final. Wrana and her team of Almida de Val, Maria Larsson and Linda Stenlund hail from Sundbyberg, just outside the capital of Stockholm, reached their third Grand Slam semifinal of this time, breaking through and advancing to the final, where they took down the reigning World Champions. Starting with hammer, Wrana scored 1 in the first end, then forced Tirinzoni to a single in the second end. After blanking the third end, Wrana took advantage of a mistake by Switzerland second Carole Howald to bring play around a corner guard and set up a score of 3 in the fourth end. Leading 4-1, Wrana for forced Tirinzoni to a single in the fifth end, then scored 2 in the sixth end to extend their lead to four points. In the seventh end, Wrana made a double with her last, just moving the 2nd Tirinzoni stone out far enough, leaving last-rock thrower a shot at a split for three, just over curling leaving the Swiss with only two points. Tirinzoni stole a single in the eighth end, but it wasn't enough as Wrana took the $40,000 first place cheque. In the semifinals, Wrana defeated Canada's Kerri Einarson 10-3 while Tirinzoni won 6-3 over Korea's Eun-Ji Gim. Wrana and Einarson received byes to the semifinals as the top two seeds in the round-robin portion of the tournament, while Tirinzoni had to do some extra work after losing their first two matches to Japan's Satsuki Fujisawa (8-5) and Canada's Kaitlyn Lawes (7-2). Tirinzoni finished at 3-2, winning a tiebreaker game over Canada's Clancy Grandy, then winning 7-5 in the quarterfinals on Saturday evening. Wrana finished 4-1 in the 12-team split pools round-robin, winning their opening game 7-5 over Rachel Homan (Ottawa, ON), then won 5-4 against Fujisawa and 6-2 against Team Scheidegger, skipped by Chelsea Carey (Lethbridge, AB). Wrana went on to lose 8-7 against Tirinzoni, then responded with a 10-4 win over Lawes (Winnipeg, MB) in their final qualifying round match. |