Brad Gushue captures second Elite 10 title with win over Reid Carruthers

CHATHAM, Ont. – Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L., has picked up his second Elite 10 title with a win over Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers in the men’s final to open the Grand Slam of Curling season on Sunday.

Gushue picked up his 11th Grand Slam of Curling championship by holding off Carruthers for a 1-up victory at a soldout Thames Campus Arena.

“I didn’t know what to expect seeing as how (third Mark Nichols) and I only got on the ice last Sunday,” said Gushue

“We had low expectations, but to come out here and win against teams that have played two, three or four times, it’s good but a little bit of luck. We had some fortunate misses against us and also made some key shots too.”

Earlier Sunday, Olympic champion Anna Hasselborg of Sweden defeated Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni to win the inaugural Elite 10 women’s championship.

“This has been a goal for us since we came into the Slam series”, said Hasselborg.

“To (win) this early in the season really proves that we are on the right track. I’m just so happy with how the team performed today. We played the best game so far.”

Hasselborg won 4-and-2 to claim her first Grand Slam title and first for a Swedish women’s team.

Hasselborg’s rink was undefeated through the tournament, going 6-0 en route to the championship. She beat Rachel Homan of Ottawa in Saturday’s semifinal to earn her spot in Sunday’s match.

Tirinzoni had knocked off Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg in her semi.

Originally a men’s invitational, the Grand Slam series added a women’s division to the Elite 10 this season.

The tournament uses a unique format.

Points are scored in match play by either counting two or more rocks (with the hammer) or stealing at least one rock (without the hammer).

Teams earned three points for a regulation win, two points for a shootout win and one point for a shootout loss. The top six teams overall, regardless of pools, qualified for the weekend playoffs.

The Elite 10 has three additional unique rules: Stopwatches are banned, tick shots cannot be performed on guards sitting on the centre line until the fifth rock of play and teams have four minutes of thinking time per end.