No shortcut for skip   

By Doug Graham
THE WHIG-STANDARD
February 6, 2010
 

Robert Rumfeldt has taken the long road to the final four of the Ontario men's curling championship.

Rumfeldt's Guelph Curling Club rink qualified for the Ontario Tankard through the last-chance challenge round after losing out in regional competition.

It took the rink 14 games, with 11 wins, just to get to the 11-rink provincial competition at the Strathcona Paper Centre.

But the field now has been cut to four and Rumfeldt remains in contention.

The 43-year-old commercial banker locked up his playoff spot in the second-last draw of the round-robin yesterday afternoon, defeating London's Kirk Ziola 7-3.

It was the fifth straight win for Rumfeldt (7-3), who was able to sit back and enjoy last night's 11th and final draw secure with the knowledge he would be playing in the Page 3-4 playoff game tonight at 7 p.m.

"When we saw the (round-robin) schedule we weren't sure how the bye in the last round would work out," said Rumfeldt, who finished eighth in 2000 in his only other provincial appearance as a skip.

"As it has turned out, this has worked out really, really well."

Coldwater's Glenn Howard, the heavy favourite and four-time reigning champion, won the round-robin with a 10-0 record, the second time in four years his rink has gone undefeated heading into the playoff round.

Rumfeldt will play Brampton's Peter Corner tonight. Corner lost 9-6 to Bryan Coch rane of Ottawa in the final draw to decide second place last night. Cochrane goes into the Page 1-2 game against Howard at 2 p.m.

The Page 1-2 winner advances directly to the final tomorrow (2 p.m.). The Page 3-4 winner meets the Page 1-2 loser in semifinal play tomorrow morning (9:30 a.m.).

The Rumfeldt rink of third Scott Hodgson, and the rotating front end of brothers Jeff Robins

on and Greg Robinson and Nolan Sims, has been very hot since losing badly to Howard Wednesday morning. The rink slipped to 2-3 at that point.

Since then, however, not only has the Rumfeldt rink reeled off five straight wins but it has been limiting the opposition to little.

With last rock advantage, Rumfeldt has given up only three steals all week -- including only one of those over the last five games. Conversely, when he hasn't had last rock to work with, the opposition has scored a multiple- count end only three times (all two-enders).

"That is a little bit of our style. We tend to play a little more of a conservative style," Rumfeldt said.

"If things aren't going our way early on (in an end), we're not afraid to rip a few rocks out of there and start again at the next end until things start our way."

The numbers back that style up. Rumfeldt has had seven blank ends, a fairly high number in the four-rock free guard zone era.

Rumfeldt isn't one to look beyond the next game -- "I don't think that is healthy," he said. But since he will be coming from the Page 3-4 spot, and if Howard wins in the Page 1-2 game as expected, Rumfeldt could avoid Howard until the championship game.

Beating one of the very best rinks in a series is one thing, but in a one-game meeting, the odds are a little better. Of course, it's still a long shot since Howard's rink is an astounding 50-4 at the Ontario Tankard since winning the first of four successive titles in 2006.

"I would probably agree that a one-shot deal is best," Rumfeldt said.

He does, after all, have some experience with the Howards in a sudden-death game for the Ontario title. In 1996, Rumfeldt was the second on Bob Ingram's Ridgetown rink which faced Russ Howard, with Glenn Howard at third, in the championship.

Ingram pulled off a stunner, scoring four in the first end. It prompted third Larry Smythe to turn to the skip after the four went up on the scoreboard.

"What do we do now," Smythe deadpanned at the time.

"That's a true story," Rumfeldt recalled. "Larry said to me, 'you know Rummy if someone said at the start of the year you would be in the championship against Russ Howard and you would start out ahead 4-0, would you have believed it?'" Rumfeldt recalled.

"I kind of blurted out that I wouldn't. Larry said to just relax and play it out."

Ingram held on to win and the rink went on to the Brier, finishing seventh.

Last night, while the round-robin finished off, Rumfeldt was relaxing again, letting it play out just the way Smythe suggested 14 years ago.