The Scott Tournament of Hearts Is Coming:Visits to this blog soar as net surfers search for nude photos

The Scott Tournament of Hearts, Canada's curling championship for women will soon take place. It will be earlier than usual this year, presumably to avoid conflicting with the 2010 Winter Olympics.

We were reminded that it is coming soon because visits to this blog have sky-rocketed recently. It appears that suddenly someone somewhere has written yet another article about the Nude Women of Curling Calendar, and hundreds of people are visiting this posting on EclectEcon and this posting here at Curling, to look for the soft-core porn of curling. I'll grant that the few photos I have seen from the past calendars are superb art, but it never ceases to amaze (and disappoint) me that people are more interested in nudity than they are in our writings on other subjects.

Jones Wins 2008 Scott Tournament of Hearts

Showing a steady hand and mind through the last eight games, the Jones rink from Manitoba won the 2008 Scott Tournament of Hearts, defeating the Kleibrink rink from Alberta by a score of 6-4 after Shannon Kleibrink missed/jammed a run-back double in the final end.

The Manitoba rink got off to a slow start during the week but won their last four games of the round robin to win a tie-break position in the playoffs and then won every one of their games in the play-offs.

The difference in the final was that Overton-Clapham (3rd for Manitoba) curled much better than she had during the earlier games, and Amy Nixon (3rd for Alberta) curled much worse.

Overall, I was puzzled by the Alberta strategy in some of the early ends, in which they opted to let Manitoba take two rather than attempt a freeze to force Manitoba to take one in those ends.

That said, Alberta controlled the last end, down one, and after an amazingly good shot (triple take-out) by Nixon was sitting four. Jennifer Jones had to make two very accurate draws to put the pressure on Shannon Kleibrink. Her first overcurled just a bit, allowing Kleibrink to pick it out. But the second was well-placed and forced Kleibrink to opt for the run-back double, which jammed.

The Jones rink from Manitoba will undoubtedly represent Canada well at the Worlds. Congratulations to them, and may they continue their phenomenal play and winning streak.

Team Canada Repeats, Defeating Saskatchewan 8-5 at the Tournament of Hearts

It was not a super difficult prediction, but before the 2007 Scotties Tournament of Hearts began, I wrote,

Going out (not very far on a very thick limb), my prediction for the champion: Kelly Scott, last year's champion.

Saskatchewan looked very good throughout the round robin and then defeated Team Canada in the 1-2 page play-off. But in the final match, Jan Betker (skip of Team Saskatchewan) misread the ice a bit, and ended up curling only 74% to Kelly Scott's 82%. All the percentages are available here at Curlcast (and, joy of joys, if you use that direct link, you can resize the window!). Betker's misreading of the ice perhaps played a role in the low shooting percentage for Inglis (Saskatchewan 2nd) as well.

Team Canada will soon head off to Japan for the Women's World Championships. And I must say that based on the week-long performances, I am happy they are representing Canada there.

Meanwhile, we have a week-long drought before the Brier begins next weekend.

Who Will Better Represent Canada in the Worlds?

The way Saskatchewan has played this past week, I'm surprised they lost any games at the 2007 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. And the currently reigning Team Canada, although I picked them to win, almost backed into the final, with Jennifer Jones of Manitoba missing too many of her shots, especially early in the match.

I am delighted that the final will be between the two teams that played so well during the tournament. I would be happy to have either one of them represent Canada in the worlds next month. I have to wonder, though, after seeing them play this past week, whether Saskatchewan might do a better job there than Team Canada.

I like both teams. I don't even know who I'll be cheering for in the finals.

Scotties: The Field is Spreading

Going to Draw 9 of the 2007 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, it looked as if the field of competing teams had pretty much divided itself into two groups: the contenders and the others. Saskatchewan looked unbeatable, and Manitoba, Team Canada, Ontario, and BC all had very good records. But now the field is beginning to spread out a bit, with a few of the weaker teams with good records losing and a few of the better teams with bad records picking up a win or two. And who knows how Saskatchewan will perform after having two draws off in a row.

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are clearly not as good as the other teams, and they are still winless. And Newfoundland's performance seems more in line with their abilities, confirming the suspicion that their making the play-offs last year was a feat that would not likely be repeated this year.

PEI has some flashes of brilliance at times and looks tremendously over-matched at others. I remember having the same impression of their rink last year, when they played in London. With a record of 2W and 4L, they are not likely to make the playoffs, but they might be good enough to cause trouble for some of the contenders along the way, as they did for BC this morning. The NWT seems about the same.

Alberta, on average, looks better than PEI, but I'm not sure they are good enough to crack the top four.

The real puzzle for me is Ontario. They have a great record so far, but their wins have mostly come against the weaker teams. They were blown away by Saskatchewan, but they looked quite good in their 11-end loss to Canada. They certainly seem to have improved considerably since last year.

And although Manitoba started with a loss to Saskatchewan, they have come on strong. Here's hoping I get to see more of the head-to-head matches between the top teams as the week progresses.

I had the opportunity to sneak a peek at the Ontario - Canada draw in my office, now and then this morning, via CurlTV. It sure is nice having that service available, even though there are many ways in which it can be improved.

Another information source that Alan and I discussed at length last year is CurlCast, which provides regular updates of scores and tonnes of other data. I see they still have not made their window resizable (which I would love, so I could put it up top of my screen and keep working), but the information they provide is absolutely amazing.