FREDERICTION -- It was all but academic heading into the final day of round robin competition at the World Senior Men’s Curling Championship, but now it’s official.
Regina’s Randy Bryden and his Team Canada foursome are into the quarter-finals at the World Senior Men’s Curling Championship currently underway in Fredericton, N.B.
Bryden and his Regina Callie rink of third Troy Robinson, second Russ Bryden and lead Chris Semenchuk capped the preliminary round in style on Thursday morning, rolling to a 14-2 victory over the Netherlands Bob Bomas to finish with a 6-0 record and in first place in Pool A
Canada once again gave up a steal in the first end, but it was clear sailing from there -- four in the second, a steal of four in the third, steal of one in the fourth and steal of two in the fifth made it 11-1 heading into the break. Bomas scored one in the sixth, but another three for Bryden in the seventh brought things to an early end
It was the fifth-straight game that Canada closed out without having to play eight ends, with four of those wins coming by six or more points and Bryden hitting double digits in three of them.
Canada opened the tournament with a 6-3 extra end win over Belgium’s Stefan Van Dijck on Saturday before downing Portugal’s Vitor Santos 15-2 Sunday, England’s Ken Horton 8-2 Monday, Wales’ Andrew Tanner 11-2 on Tuesday and Ireland’s Bill Gray 9-4 on Wednesday.
Thanks to his perfect record and solid showing in the Draw Shot Challenge throughout the week, Bryden advances straight to the quarter-final and will face the winner of Germany’s Andy Kapp and Poland’s Damian Herman at 10 a.m. on Friday.
Joining Canada as quarter-final qualifiers are Finland’s Toni Rantamaki (5-0 in Group B), Norway’s Evan Ugland (4-1 in Group C) and Switzerland’s Dieter Wueest (4-1 in Group E).
Finland will face the winner of Sweden’s Dan-Ola Eriksson and Czechia’s David Sik, Norway will take on the winner of the United States’ Mike Farbelow and Hungary’s Gyorgy Nagy and Switzerland will face the winner of Scotland’s Tom Brewster and England’s Ken Horton.
Final standings from Canada’s Group A were as follows:
Canada (Bryden) 6-0 Q
England (Horton) 5-1 Q
Portugal (Santos) 3-3
Wales (Tanner) 2-4
Ireland (Gray) 2-4
Netherlands (Bomas) 2-4
Belgium (Van Dijck) 1-5
The quarter-final winners will advance to the semifinal at 4:30 p.m. Friday, followed by the championship final and bronze medal games at 7 a.m. on Saturday.
You can follow along with all the playoff round scores by .
