CHAMPION: Matsumura Wins 2019 Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic

SKIP
Yuta
Matsumura

Third
Tetsuro
Shimizu

Second
Yasumasa
Tanida

Lead
Shinya
Abe

Yuta Matsumura (Kitami, JPN) won 7-2 over Scott McDonald (Kingston, ON) in the Final of the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic, held August 1 - 4, 2019 at the Hokkaido Bank Curling Stadium in Sapporo, Japan. To advance to the championship game, Matsumura won 6-5 over Kirk Muyres (Saskatoon, SK) in the semifinals

Matsumura finished 3-1 in the 10-team qualifying round. . In their opening game, Matsumura defeated Junpei Kanda (Tokyo, JPN) 6-0, then won 7-5 against Jason Gunnlaugson (Winnipeg, MB). Matsumura went on to lose 7-6 against SooHyuk Kim (Seoul, KOR). Matsumura responded with a 6-4 win over Qiang Zou (Beijing, CHN) in their final qualifying round match.

For winning the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic Championship title, Matsumura earned 36.563 world rankings points along with the $12,502CDN first prize cheque, moving up 2 spots the World Ranking Standings into 15th place overall with 237.588 total points. Matsumura ranks 1st overall on the Year-to-Date rankings with 36.563 points earned so far this season.

RECORD	W	L	T	PCT	HMR	STL	1PT	EEH	EES

SCORING	ENDs	PF	PA	PF/G	PA/G	+/-	EF/G	EA/G	PF/E	PA/E	BE/G

WITH HAMMER	ENDs	PF	PA	BE	4s	3s	2s	PF/E	PA/E	HE	SD

WITHOUT HAMMER	ENDs	PF	PA	BE	4s	3s	2s	PF/E	PA/E	FE	SE

2023: Kohsuke Hirata
Kohsuke Hirata, Shingo Usui, Ryota Meguro, Yoshiya Miura
Kitami, JPN
2022: ByeongJin Jeong
ByeongJin Jeong, JeongJae Lee, MinWoo Kim, Taehwan Kim
Seoul, KOR
2019: Yuta Matsumura
Yuta Matsumura, Tetsuro Shimizu, Yasumasa Tanida, Shinya Abe, Kosuke Aita
Kitami, JPN
2018: Masaki Iwai
Go Aoki, Masaki Iwai, Ryotaro Shukuya, Koki Ogiwara, Kei Kamada
Sapporo, JPN
2017: Soo-Hyuk Kim
Soo-Hyuk Kim, Taehwan Kim, Jongduk Park, Yoonho Nam
Gangwon, KOR
2016: Karsten Sturmay
Karsten Sturmay, Tristan Steinke, Chris Kennedy, Caleb Boorse
Edmonton, AB

Brendan Bottcher (photo: Stan Fong) is moving on from now former teammates Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert, announced Tuesday.

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