The longest deliberation
We're going to be here a while, so let's talk about the Kevin Martin throwaway
The 2009 world men’s championship was between Canada and Scotland. In the 10th end, Kevin Martin had hammer in front of a raucous Moncton, New Brunswick crowd, because there is no other kind. Scotland threw two center guards, Canada missed a tick attempt then had Ben Hebert throw his second into the four-foot. Scotland second Peter Smith tried for the freeze, but bumped it a little.
That allowed Marc Kennedy, who at the time looked to be about 12 years old, had enough space to tap the red out with hack weight. They looked at the double peel, but Kevin said if they missed it, Scotland freezes and it’s dangerous.
You’re told, in strategy, to assume the other team makes the next shot. It’s a big assumption in life, that something will happen, and yet in this sport the risk aversion is built right in.
Marc made the hack weighter.
Scotland, still in a good position, went the other way for a freeze. Smith’s rock just overcurled a bit and ticked the lower guard — however left it almost to where he wanted it.
Still, it was enough of a make for Canada to play on it. Kennedy hit and rolled under cover.
Canada’s sitting great, but Scotland does have double guards and a lot of yellow to freeze against. Again, they just need one. Ewan MacDonald, try finding a more Scottish name, lobs one into the yellow, creating a nice pocket.
This was the time to double peel, and they tried it, but John Morris only got one of the guards.
Here Scotland called a timeout, and for those that couldn’t pay attention and were simply lost in that Scottish accent (aye), they were wondering if a tap freeze was enough, worrying that a guard would end their steal chances. Ultimately they decided it was the right call and MacDonald’s second turned into this awkward-for-everybody angle. Ach.
Sometimes you have to assume the other team makes their shot, but in this case they had to guess what they’d do. Look, I’d have guarded. But I’m not an elite curler, and those elite curlers love to leave nothing to the imagination and keep it as clean as possible.
And Canada peels because that’s what they do — and you don’t want to set yourself up to make an impossible shot.
Scotland has two rocks left and hasn’t been shot stone yet. They’ve yet to make an incredible shot, but usually steal teams don’t have that one shot that you look back on. That honor goes to the hammer team. The steal team is all about surviving, clinging, biding. At the club level it’s basically not wanting to have to throw the pressure shot to win. Nobody expects anything from the steal team!
So Scotland tries to go for the tap-tap. Still not shot stone!
What follows here, reader — and I mention this because we’re all just holed up in our respective dwellings waiting for this thing to be over — is six minutes of deliberation by some of Earth’s finest curlers.
Six minutes is a lot of time standing on the ice wracking your brain until you convince yourself that throwing away a rock — in the 10th end! The penultimate stone! — is the wisest, most utilitarian strategy. No, you should do something with that stone, make it better. John Morris said something that Vic Rauter repeated in the highlight, that at that moment even they knew Kevin was going to be remembered as a genius or the dumbest person in the building.
One of the hardest and most overlooked aspects of “looking ahead” is visualizing where their thrown rock will land. It lands somewhere between an easy mistake and an impossible task. You may not think it’s in the way at all. You might subconsciously hope it’s not in the way. Maybe it’s human nature. Maybe it just rolls a single inch one way or the other and it foils your plans.
But the first thing David Murdoch saw when it was finally their house — the double red tap — was absolutely within the realm of possibility when Kevin Martin was thinking ahead. I don’t think he pictured this:
What did he leave himself? A red triple or a short promote.
That middle red rock rolled perfectly into a frozen spot. It made everything tough. And Martin’s triple attempt overcurled and missed. Scotland stole the point.
The epilogue here — and I enjoy showing this setup to newer skips — is that sometimes in a situation there is no right answer, so pick a shot and hope it works. Even 11 years later, I still find myself looking at that, hoping to crack the case of The Missing Perfect Shot, but all I come up with is that overthinking makes you cold.