Canada’s Rachel Homan tuned up for the playoffs with a 9-4 victory over Estonia’s Liisa Turmann on Thursday morning at the world women’s curling championship.
Homan opened with three points and stole four more points in the second end. The teams shook hands after playing the minimum six ends.
“We didn’t expect it to be that lopsided, they’re a great team,” Homan said. “We just caught them a couple times on a draw line.”
Homan and her Ottawa-based team of Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes improved to 9-0 with three round-robin games remaining.
With the result well in hand, Canadian alternate Rachel Brown replaced Wilkes in the sixth end. Homan’s side was scheduled to put its 25-game winning streak on the line in the evening draw against New Zealand’s Jessica Smith.
Canada secured a playoff berth on Wednesday night with a 9-5 victory over Turkey. The top six teams in the 13-team field will make the weekend playoffs at Centre 200.
Two other early games Thursday needed just the six-end minimum. Italy locked up a playoff spot with a 10-2 rout of Norway’s Marianne Roervik and Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni thumped New Zealand 10-2.
Tabitha Peterson of the United States scored two points in the 10th end for a 9-7 win over Japan’s Miyu Ueno.
After 15 draws, Canada (9-0) and Italy (8-1) were ahead of defending champion Switzerland (7-2), South Korea’s Eunji Gim (6-2), Denmark’s Madeleine Dupont (6-3) and Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg (5-4).
A top-two finish in the round-robin standings will secure a direct berth to the semifinals. The four other playoff teams will play qualification games Saturday morning.
The Americans improved to 4-5 while Japan joined Norway and Scotland’s Rebecca Morrison at 3-6. Turkey’s Dilsat Yildiz was 2-7 while Estonia and New Zealand were 1-8.
Homan is making her fourth career appearance at this competition. Her lone world title came in 2017 at Beijing.
Tirinzoni has won four world titles in a row. Jennifer Jones was skip of the last Canadian team to win gold, taking top spot in 2018 at North Bay, Ont.
Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L., will represent Canada at the March 30-April 7 world men’s curling championship in Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
