Following six sessions of round-robin play at the Pacific-Asia Curling Championships, both Japanese teams remain undefeated with three wins and no losses.
The men opened the day with a strong performance against Korea, with an 8-2 win after six ends. Japan’s skip, Yusuke Morozumi, made a spectacular double take-out in the fourth end for four points to aid the victory.
In their second game of the day, they met Chinese Taipei and drew for six points in the third end to win 11-4.
The women faced Korea’s Eun-Jung Kim in the morning session. It was a tight game until Japan’s skip, Sayaka Yoshimura, made a perfect raise take-out for three points in the ninth end. From there the Japanese team ran the Korean’s out of stones to win 9-5.
“Each team had good shots but when we had a chance, we made a great shot and we took control of the game,” said Yoshimura.
[on shot in the ninth end] “Originally, we wanted to take out the shot stone directly but you couldn’t see very much of it so we chose to play a runback double. It was okay because if we missed we only give a steal of one and we would have hammer in the last end and there is no problem. But we played the challenging shot and we got it!”
Kazakhstan men win again
Viktor Kim and his young team sit in second place with two wins and no losses. The hosts narrowly defeated Qatar in the evening session, 8-7, with a winning take-out in the tenth end by Kim.
Qatar, Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei each won their first game on the Men’s side today and Saudi Arabia are still in search of their first win.
On the Women’s side, Kazakhstan captured their first win against Hong Kong, who have not won a game yet.
Tuesday (9 November) will mark the half-way of the round-robin competition with the top four teams making the play-offs this weekend.
Session four:
Men: Korea 2-8 Japan; Qatar 9-4 Saudi Arabia; Hong Kong 6-9 Chinese Taipei
Women: Japan 9-5 Korea
Session five:
Women: Hong Kong 6-11 Kazakhstan
Session six:
Men: Hong Kong 8-3 Saudi Arabia; Qatar 7-8 Kazakhstan; Chinese Taipei 4-11 Japan
