I spent a bit of time last week at the Grand Slam’s Canadian Open at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg. It was not the best curling I’ve seen but it was pretty darn good.

I have to admit, however, I don’t think the Grand Slam series actually brings out the best in the competitors. When you get right down to it, I’m inclined to think of that event as just another club game for the curlers.

You don’t see the same passion for the game in the eyes of the competitors that you see at a Tim Hortons Brier or a Manitoba Safeway Championship. Those games really matter. They only happen once a year and they mean much more than cashing another cheque.

When I say it’s just another club game, I admit that it is an awfully good club. They play the game at a higher level than your average local club curler but so does everyone in their club. At the Grand Slams, the prize purse is bigger so maybe that adds a little extra pressure compared to the regular weekend bonspiels.

But there’s another bonspiel coming next week or the week after.

Think about it this way. The local club may have three or four or five competitive divisions. The “A” Group is the best players in the club. The “B” Group is that group of curlers who are just on the edge. They’re knocking on the door to move up to “A” Group and every once in a while, they break through. The “A” Group curlers might play 75-80 per cent most of the time and occasionally will have a great game shooting over 90 per cent. Those “B” Group guys might consistently be in the 70-75 per cent range and they work hard at getting that little bit better so they can make the move up.

The Grand Slam players club is a pretty small group of about 20 teams who will consistently shoot in the 80-90 per cent range and regularly play better than that. Names like Martin, Howard, and Stoughton are obvious. Names like McEwen come to mind when you think of the guy knocking on the door and staying in the club once he gets into it. Names like Gunnlaugson come to mind when you think about guys knocking on the door who have to prove they’re good enough to be in the club.

In the end, though, it’s just another club game and maybe that’s why attendance wasn’t great last week at the MTS Centre. Now don’t get me wrong here. An announced attendance of more than 40,000 for the week and more than 4,000 for the final game is much greater than these events draw in other locations, even if a significant percentage of the tickets were freebies.

More important, when I was there, I didn’t get the impression the spectators were excited about the curling. They showed their appreciation for the great shots but I think the problem may be they’ve been exposed to so much remarkable curling. The Skins Games, the Curling Trials, every draw of the Scotties and the Brier, even that final game of the Juniors on TV last weekend had 14 rocks in play when Alex Forrest threw his last rock on the second end.

It has attracted huge audiences of TV curling fans but it is taking away the excitement of sitting in the stands and watching good curling. It is also making it difficult for the local clubs because people’s expectations for their own curling are too high. They can’t duplicate the shots they see on TV and, in this modern age of instant gratification, it is easier to give up than to put in the work those guys do to be so darn good.

I once heard a guy say curling was in danger of becoming like NASCAR racing with a lot of people watching it and not many people doing it. That worries me.

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