Scotland miss out as Curling World Cup finalists confirmed in China

New for this season, the Curling World Cup will see men's, women's and mixed teams compete across three legs across China, the United States and Sweden before a grand final in Beijing.

Eight teams in each of the three disciplines compete across two pools with just the table-toppers going through to a final, with the victors booking their places in May's finale event.

And Mouat at Scotland were inches away from throwing themselves in contention, agonisingly missing out 6-5 in their final round robin match against Switzerland to finish second in their pool behind Canada.

The skip's stone was narrowly too light as Scotland attempted to force a nearest-the-button shootout, losing just twice in their six round-robin matches.

It means Canada will face Norway for the right to be crowned the first World Cup event winners, though Mouat knows Scotland's time will come again as the season inches into its early stages.

"I thought I threw that last stone pretty good but it just didn't curl up enough for me. It's very frustrating," he said. "It was shaping up for an ideal situation for me, to draw the four foot, then I get to draw the button to win the shootout.

"It's the shot you really want to play going into that shootout, but it just didn't work out that way.

"It was a tough group we were in, with Canada and Switzerland in there. We built on what we were doing at the Baden Masters for the first competition of our season.

"I'm pretty happy with how we've played this week but disappointed we couldn't at least take it to a shootout."

Norway and Canada both lost just one match in their round-robin encounters, the same as Sweden Canada encountered in the women's competitions as they booked their own final head-to-head.

Canada's Team Homan and Team Hasselborg of Norway made life difficult for themselves before eventually setting up a big-name women's final in Suzhou.

At the start of the final day of group action in south-eastern China, both rinks led their respective groups with a maximum 12 points, but their smooth progress was interrupted as both lost unexpectedly early on in the day.

Team Hasselborg went down 7-2 to Japan in the morning session, a result which saw Team Fujisawa pull within three points in the group standings.

In the following session, Team Homan suffered a shock to the system too, beaten 8-2 by Korea, who had failed to register a single point prior to that stunning victory.

Meanwhile the mixed team competition will see United States – who won all six of their preliminary matches – taking on Canada, the only nation to have final representation in all three disciplines.

Sportsbeat 2018