CHAMPION: Yanagisawa Wins 2023 ZEH-NOH Japan Curling Championship

SKIP
Riku
Yanagisawa

Third
Tsuyoshi
Yamaguchi

Second
Takeru
Yamamoto

Lead
Satoshi
Koizumi

Riku Yanagisawa (Karuizawa, JPN) won 6-2 over Kohsuke Hirata (Kitami, JPN) in the Final of the ZEH-NOH Japan Curling Championship, held January 28 - February 5, 2023 in Kitami, Japan.

Yanagisawa finished 7-1 in the 9-team qualifying round. . In their opening game, Yanagisawa defeated Hayato Sato (Sapporo, JPN) 9-4, then won 10-2 against Japan's Kotaro Noguchi and 9-4 against Ryo Ogihara (Tokyo, JPN). Yanagisawa won 11-2 against Hiroki Yoshioka (Okayama, JPN), then won 9-6 against Shinya Abe (Sapporo, JPN) and 8-7 against Yusuke Morozumi (Karuizawa, JPN). Yanagisawa won 8-4 against Takanori Ichimura (Nagano, JPN). Yanagisawa went on to lose 7-5 against Hirata in their final qualifying round match.

For winning the ZEH-NOH Japan Curling Championship Championship title, Yanagisawa earned 26.250 world rankings points. Yanagisawa move up 9 spots after posting a net gain of 23.253 points improving upon their best 7 results so far this season, ranking 18th overall with 150.748 total points on the World Ranking Standings. Yanagisawa ranks 15th overall on the Year-to-Date rankings with 147.750 points earned so far this season.

RECORD	W	L	T	PCT	HMR	STL	1PT	EEH	EES
2023	64	31	0	0.674	10-6	13-10	8-3	1-0	2-2

SCORING	ENDs	PF	PA	PF/G	PA/G	+/-	EF/G	EA/G	PF/E	PA/E	BE/G
2023	720	556	447	7.72	6.21	1.51	4.58	3.93	1.68	1.58	1.49

WITH HAMMER	ENDs	PF	PA	BE	4s	3s	2s	PF/E	PA/E	HE	SD
2023	344	427	79	43	10-1	28-5	96-9	1.24	0.23	0.45	0.17

WITHOUT HAMMER	ENDs	PF	PA	BE	4s	3s	2s	PF/E	PA/E	FE	SE
2023	376	129	368	64	1-10	6-21	28-66	0.34	0.98	0.57	0.23

Gangwon Province's Park Jong-duk (Photo: Steve Seixeiro/WCF) will try to make it a second straight national title this week in Uijeongbu.

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