With one game left on the docket and a chance at a medal, Brad Jacobs and his Canadian teammates finished the 2025 World Men’s Curling Championship on a high note.
The Jacobs rink, which includes third Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, and lead Ben Hebert rolled to an 11-2 win over China, skipped by Xiaoming Xu, Sunday in Moose Jaw, Sask.
With the win, the Canadian team won bronze at the nine-day tournament.
Following the win, Jacobs spoke about finishing the season on a good note ahead of the Players’ Championship, which starts Tuesday in Toronto.
The front end of Gallant and Hebert won’t be available for the tournament, which meant winning Sunday took on a little extra importance.
“We wanted to finish strong,” Jacobs said in an interview with TSN following the win. “We wanted to end this season on a good note with a win, not only for ourselves, but for all the fans who supported us all week.”
Jacobs added that the team “proved a lot to ourselves” over the course of the tournament.
“Coming out of here with the bronze and losing that game last night (against Scotland), that (loss) was unfortunate, but we had a really good debrief and we held our heads high,” Jacobs said.
“We’re going to learn from this. Would love another opportunity to play on the world stage again and take this experience into another one. We’ve got a lot of hard work to do to get there, but I do feel confident that if we play the way we can, we can do it.”
In the opening end, with Team Canada already sitting a pair, Xu flashed on a Canadian rock which led to a draw by Jacobs to give the home team an early 3-0 lead.
After blanking the second end, Xu made a draw while facing four Canadian rocks to get China on the board.
Jacobs proceeded to break the game open in the fourth end. The Canadian skip made a hit on his final shot of the end to score five and give Canada an 8-1 lead.
In the following end, Xu looked to draw against three Canadian rocks but was light and instead gave up a steal of two, making the score 10-1.
Looking to blank the sixth end, Xu would end up hitting a Canadian rock on the nose and scoring one.
Jacobs capped off the scoring with a draw into an open house in the eighth end to finish off the 11-2 Canadian win.
Sunday's gold medal game saw Scotland beat Switzerland 5-4.
Previous tournament coverage