Canada remains unbeaten with win over Denmark at Ford Worlds

NORTH BAY, Ont. — Jennifer Jones is well aware that she and her Canadian teammates will not get any free passes at the 2018 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship.

So the fact that Jones, vice-skip Kaitlyn Lawes, second Jill Officer, lead Dawn McEwen, alternate Shannon Birchard, team coach Wendy Morgan and national coach Elaine Dagg-Jackson were pushed hard by Denmark’s Angelina Jensen on Tuesday morning at the North Bay Memorial Gardens hardly came as a surprise.

“It seems like every team we play has their best game of the week against us, but that’s what makes it fun,” said Jones, moments after a 10-5 win over Denmark — a score that didn’t reflect the closeness of the game — that lifted Canada’s record to 5-0, tied for top spot in the 13-team round-robin standings with Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg, who had a bye on Tuesday morning. “You know you’re going to have to play your best to get into the playoffs, and you’re going to have to make some good shots. But really, that’s what you want to do — you want to try to play your best in the biggest moments.”

The Danes entered the game with a 1-3 record, but gave Canada all it could handle through seven ends; the teams were tied 4-4 and Canada was up 6-5 going into the eighth. But that’s when Canada broke it open by scoring four, prompting Denmark to concede defeat.

“You just really always want to turn it up a notch in the second half of a game; that’s usually when it matters the most,” said Jones. “We were just trying to be as patient as we could be, try to not give them a chance for a big end, and try to break a big end of our own when we could.”

Canada will have the afternoon off, and then returns to the ice Tuesday for an evening tilt at 7 p.m. against Scotland’s Hannah Fleming, who picked up her first win of the 2018 Ford Worlds after losing her first five outings. The Scots have been utilizing a fairly low-risk, keep-it-clean strategy, which Jones plans to disrupt.

“We’ll hopefully try to change that and throw some guards up and keep it exciting for the fans,” she said with a smile. “These fans have been so great to us, and we want to make sure we’re entertaining them.”

Hannah Fleming and her Scottish team picked up their first win on Tuesday. (Photo, Curling Canada/Michael Burns)

Scotland was an 8-5 winner over Germany’s Daniela Jentsch (0-5).

In the other morning games, South Korea’s EunJung Kim (4-1) nearly let a 7-1 lead slip away before prevailing 8-7 in an extra end over Italy’s Diana Gaspari (2-4); and China’s Yilun Jiang (3-3) scored three in the third end, three more in the fifth and four in the seventh in an 11-4 win over Japan’s Tori Koana (3-2).

Sweden, Anna Kubešková of the Czech Republic (3-2), Russia’s Victoria Moiseeva (3-2), Switzerland’s Binia Feltscher (2-3) and Jamie Sinclair of the U.S. (2-3) had byes on Tuesday morning.

The 2018 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship continues with draws Tuesday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (all times ET).

Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2018 Ford World Women’s are available at www.worldcurling.org/wwcc2018/livescores

TSN and RDS2 will provide complete coverage of Canada’s games at the 2018 Ford World Women’s. Go to www.tsn.ca/2017-18-curling-broadcast-schedule-1.593081 for the complete schedule.

For ticket information for the 2018 Ford World Women’s, go to www.curling.ca/2018worldwomen/tickets/

This story will be available in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/2018worldwomen/?lang=fr