Let me get this over right away. I was wrong about David Murdoch’s Scottish team.

I still believe the worlds field is a lot weaker than the Brier field – except for David Murdoch. There are two levels of teams at the World Championship level for men’s curling: Scotland and Canada, then everybody else. So, I don’t take that part of my previous post back. But I do take back what I said about Murdoch not being able to qualify for the Brier out of the more difficult provinces in Canada. Clearly, he can.

Who would have thought any team in the world could have beaten Kevin Martin three times in row? There were a lot of people (including me) who thought this team was close to curling invincibility. Teams all over Canada are going to be analyzing those three losses to see the strategy Murdoch employed to take down the giants. One loss to Scotland or anybody could have been considered a fluke, a bad game or lack of focus. Three losses clearly demonstrate an Achiles heel in the Martin machine.

Now the questions that come to my mind are how much are these three losses going to affect Kevin Martin and the rest of his squad? What about the strategy in the tenth end of the final? For a long, long time their minds are going to be occupied with thoughts of not peeling earlier in the end and, of course, throwing the first skip stone away. These are all things that have broken up many good teams.

We are all going to see just how strong of a unit Martin’s team is in the next year and whether they can avoid the team in-fighting that lesser teams suffer. It was clear that Ben Hebert and Marc Kennedy were less than happy with the play of John Morris in the final and we all saw Hebert’s reaction to Martin throwing away his second to last stone in the world final. If this team wants to win a gold medal at the Olympics in Vancouver next year, they will have to get over this loss very quickly. I guarantee you the teams of Glenn Howard, Randy Ferbey, Jeff Stoughton and Brad Gushue already smell blood in the water.

“He’s like the Tiger Woods of curling on the ice.” according to Thomas Ulsrud of Norway.

Canada’s Kevin Martin continued his domination of the world men’s curling championship in Moncton, N.B., on Wednesday, hammering Finland’s Kalle Kiiskinen 12-4 in the morning draw to improve to 8-0.

“Oh, he’s on fire,” Norway skip Thomas Ulsrud said of Martin. “He’s really on fire, and he’s crushing everybody.”

Full story on CBC Sports.

The man behind Kevin Martin’s Canadian curling machine sits perched in the coach’s box. He has his binoculars out, so are his stack of curling papers.

And when things get tense on the ice for his team — not that it happens too often — he’s known to chew on one of his famous, unlit cigars.

Meet Martin’s mentor, curling mastermind Jules Owchar.

Full story on Times & Transcript.

What?!

David Murdoch has been doing far too much rectal spelunking. He made the claim in the Eye Opener newspaper, the free publication handed out to fans at the world men’s curling championship, ” that the worlds field was tougher than last month’s Brier field. Does Murdoch actually believe what he said or did he make the statement after spending too much time in the patch.

Of all the teams at the 2009 words, Murdoch’s squad is one of the few that would have a chance to win a province – one of the weaker provinces. Let’s face it, he couldn’t win Alberta, Manitoba or Ontario. There are three teams in Edmonton better than him and he’d need to be playing out of his mind to finish fourth in Alberta assuming he would even get out of Northern Alberta playdowns.

Kevin Martin was very diplomatic when asked his opinion on Murdoch’s statement. His reply along with the full story “Martin prefers winning over debating” is available on Canada.com.