U.S. Men Get Another Curling Win
The U.S. men's curling team moved to 2-1 in round robin play with a 10-4 win over New Zealand, improving its chances of making the medal round.
(By Clive Rose -- Getty Images)
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The U.S. men are hogging wins in Olympic curling. If they keep this up, they might start getting as much attention as the fresh-faced, medal-hopeful American women.
Pete Fenson's team picked up a 10-4 victory over New Zealand in eight ends, wrapping things up two frames early a day after a last-rock loss to Finland.
"I still say we're playing pretty well," American vice skip Shawn Rojeski said. "Unfortunately, yesterday we missed the last shot of the day."
The Americans' next game is against host Italy, where curling is usually associated with fusilli. Throw in Saturday's game against the winless Germans, and Fenson's team (2-1) probably needs to steal just one or two more victories in its other four games to reach the medal round.
New Zealand went scoreless for five straight ends despite having the last rock -- a big advantage, called the hammer -- in four of them.
In the third, the Kiwis (1-2) tried to sneak a rock through a couple of blockers and nicked one of them. The Americans overcame the hammer -- think of it like a tennis player breaking serve -- for the first of three times in a four-end span.
New Zealand managed to snap the slump in the seventh, but in the eighth Fenson kept clearing them out of the target zone and scored three. Kiwi skip, or captain, Sean Becker shook hands to concede.
A regulation curling match has 10 ends, or innings, but a team usually concedes when it doesn't have enough rocks to catch up.
Men's Curling Yesterday's Results United States 10, New Zealand 4 Norway 7, Switzerland 2 Sweden 8, Canada 7 Italy 9, Germany 8 Today's Matches United States vs. Italy Finland vs. New Zealand Sweden vs. Norway Canada vs. Britain Britain vs. Norway Canada vs. Switzerland Germany vs. Finland
