Tirinzoni Faces Grandy in Summer Series Finale

Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni (photo: Anil Mungal/GSOC) defeated Hollie Duncan, while Clancy Grandy won over Jennifer Jones in the semifinals. By Frank Roch - FromTheHack.com Some familiar faces competed in the semifinals on Monday morning at the Summer Series event in St. Félicien, Quebec. Three-time reigning world champion Silvana Tirinzoni may have a new front-end this season, but she, and her new teammates have hit the ground running as a three-player team this week. Alina Paetz is set to join the team next weekend in Martensville. The team from Aarau, Switzerland, won all their round-robin games to finish 4-0 and qualify for the playoffs. In the semifinals, Tirinzoni allowed a steal in the first end to Duncan of Toronto, but then scored a single, stole two, then stole three more to jump out to a big lead. Duncan lost theirtheir first round-robin game but finished strong, going 3-0 the rest of the way. Team Duncan also has a familiar face playing with them this weekend as Sherry Middaugh is filling in at 3rd with regular third Megan Balsdon out on a medical exemption. The other semifinal was a rematch of a tight round-robin game won by Clancy Grandy and her team from Vancouver and Winnipeg's Jennifer Jones, though this time Grandy stole the first three ends en-route to a 10-3 win. Grandy went 3-1 in the round robin, starting the weekend with a win and a loss before a momentum-building last-rock come-from-behind victory over Jones on Saturday night propelled them towards the playoffs. Aside from the loss to Team Grandy, it has been a solid start to the season for Jennifer Jones, who joined forces this summer with Team Zacharias, winners of the 2020 World Juniors. The six-time Scotties champion and her new teammates dominated play in their other three round-robin games, outscoring their opponents by a combined score of 27-7 heading into the semifinals. Team Jones has been exceptionally efficient without the hammer this weekend, stealing 11 ends in four games for 23 stolen points in their first event of the season. The Final goes at 1:00 p.m. (ET) with scores and streaming links found at www.curlingzone.com.