Grand Slam of Curling: Jacobs, Muirhead steal Players' Championship titles

This is the way it's going to be between these two.

Scratching, clawing.  Every inch a battle. Every inch counting. Every lost inch hurting.

So it is that a slightly overcooked stone gave Team Brad Jacobs its first ever Pinty's Grand Slam of Curling victory, a 4-3 win over Team Mike McEwen at the season-ending Players' Championship, in Toronto.

With their own rock just off the side of the button and a guard at the top of the twelve foot, Jacobs and teammates E.J and Ryan Harnden and Ryan Fry could only watch as the skip of the season's hottest team released a less than perfect, final, throw in the decisive eighth end.

McEwen's sweepers - Matt Wozniak and Denni Neufeld - jumped on it right away. Stayed on it, too, just a little much. The stone they'd rescued with a good early batch of sweeping was then sent an inch or two too long, settling in the back four-foot and giving Jacobs the win.

Seeking a 73rd win of the season and an off-season perch as the top men's team on the planet, McEwen and his mates will start next season as the number-two seed, while Jacobs and company stay fist-pumping on the throne, pocketing $98,500.00 with the Toronto win. McEwen's team finishes the year with a record of 72 and 12 and a winning percentage of .857, third best in Canadian men's curling history (according to statistics provided on the Sportsnet broadcast of the final).

The 2015 Players' Championship men's final was a microcosm of what the future holds when it comes to the road ahead for Teams McEwen and Jacobs.

It was a tight game to begin, each forcing the other to take a single with hammer before Team McEwen grabbed a little momentum by blanking the third and then cracking a deuce in the fourth end. With Team Jacobs answering with a two of their own in the fifth, followed by blanks in the sixth and seventh, it came down to that last toss and a couple of broom strokes too many.

So, Team Jacobs remains the gold standard, getting back more than a little shine on their crowns after a season that had seen them lose four of their previous five games to McEwen, including the championship final at The Canada Cup, and the final of The National, right in Team Jacobs' hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

It's a rivalry that almost wasn't. Or, at least, almost wasn't in its current form. After a particularly bitter loss in the 2014 Manitoba Championship, McEwen and his teammates - B.J. Neufeld is the other member - were ready to call it quits. A change of heart, especially on the part of the skip, meant that the team instead reorganized and committed anew to continuing the trek together (You can read about that here).

In hammering together one of the great seasons ever, Team McEwen has completely changed its trajectory. With a season that wasn't always exactly what they wanted (a loss in the final at The Brier and those losses to McEwen) but one that ends with a slam victory, Team Jacobs has confirmed theirs.

What lies ahead are a couple of seasons of these teams each taking turns as the rabbit, the other not very far behind, in all likelihood. It will be a joy for curling fans to watch these two chase each other all the way to the Ottawa, and the 2017 Olympic Curling Trials. Not that they're the only two to be concerned with, obviously. But they are the front runners right now.

Great rivalries are the oxygen of any sport. This one seems poised to fan the flames to great, great heights in the years to come.

MUIRHEAD TAKES A SECOND GRAND SLAM TITLE

In the women's final, Scotland's Eve Muirhead skipped her team to a 4-2 win over Anna Sidorova's Russian side, stealing points in each of the final two ends.

It's Muirhead's second Pinty's Grand Slam win of the season - she defeated Rachel Homan in the final of the Canadian Open last December - and it earned her team the Rogers Grand Slam Cup, with a cool $35,000.00 bonus.

This season has only cemented Team Muirhead's place as one of the best outfits in the world and this championship comes, once again, from their willingness to play an aggressive style. Time and again, this week, Muirhead and her mates - Anna Sloan, Vicki Adams and Sara Reid -  attacked with a derring-do that makes them one of the most entertaining teams in all of curling to watch. Muirhead takes on difficult shots without, it seems, very much hesitation or fear, choosing to try and grab games by the throat with a big score at the risk of missing out on smaller, more assured ends. That she makes those shots most of the time might have something to do with that. We could do much worse than having more teams mimic the style of the team from Stirling. They're just flat out entertaining.

Speaking of which; The way Sidorova's team (Margarita Fomina, Aleksandra Saitova and Ekatarina Galkina round out the rink) played this week might just signal a move to more aggressive play on their part. They seemed to throw caution to the wind more often than usual (occasionally to the head-scratching of Sportsnet analysts Mike Harris, Joan McCusker and Kevin Martin) and it carried them all the way to their first Grand Slam final.

Are they emerging as more of a force on the women's side? After disappointing at the 2014 Olympics, the team from Moscow had a very good 2014-15 season, taking bronze at The World Championship (beating Muirhead in the bronze medal game) and grabbing silver, not only in Toronto, but also at the Le Gruyere European Championship. On top of that, they emerged with a victory at Glynhill and won the world university title. At the Sochi Olympics, they looked like their ultra-busy schedule leading up to The Games had them exhausted. This season, they've looked anything but.