Tomorrow sees the beginning of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling in North Bay.
The event, known as the Masters, will see the world’s greatest curling teams descend on the town and occupy Memorial Gardens. The Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling is a professional league comprised of six men and women’s tournaments featuring the top-ranked teams from around the world.
Teams have to qualify to play in the tournament by competing in the World Curling Tour to obtain Order of Merit points that determines rankings on who gets in.
This year’s Masters is set to feature defending Olympic gold medalists Anna Hasselborg and John Shuster. Sault Ste Marie native and former Olympic gold medalist Brad Jacobs will also be competing in the event.
Tuesday’s lone set of draws features five matches, Team Jones vs Team Cannon, Team Homan vs Team Yoshimura, Team Bottcher vs Team McEwen, Team Gushue vs Team Dunstone and Team Tirinzoni vs Team Rocque.
Wednesday starts the full set of draws, starting at 8:00am, 12:00pm, 4:00pm and 8:00pm. Playoffs are on Saturday while Sunday will see the Women’s and Men’s finals at 12:00pm and 4:30pm respectively.
The first curling event that North Bay hosted, the Women’s World Curling Championship set attendance records for those that had been held in Canada. Team Canada skip, Jennifer Jones, who is competing at the event stated at the time that she had never played in a louder arena.
Tickets are available here starting at $10.