The Players' Championship is one of the final events on the

World Curling Tour The World Curling Tour (WCT) is a group of curling bonspiels featuring the best male, female, and mixed doubles curlers in the world. History The World Curling Tour was founded by former World Champion Ed Lukowich, with later assistance from Jo ...

(WCT) and is a part of the

Grand Slam of Curling The Grand Slam of Curling (branded as the Pinty's Grand Slam of Curling for sponsorship reasons) is a series of curling bonspiels that are a part of the annual World Curling Tour. Grand Slam events offer a purse of at least CAD$100,000, and f ...

. From 2016 to 2019, it was the penultimate slam of the curling season, and the last of the four "majors". The event was one of the original Grand Slam events when they were instituted in the 2001–02 season for men and for the 2006–07 season for women.

History

The event began as the "VO Cup" before the Grand Slam era in 1993, as part of the very first World Curling Tour season. The event was known as the VO Cup for two seasons before title sponsor

Seagram's The Seagram Company Ltd. (which traded as Seagram's) was a Canadian multinational conglomerate formerly headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Originally a distiller of Canadian whisky based in Waterloo, Ontario, it was once (in the 1990s) the la ...

Distillery pulled out. With no sponsor, the 1995 event was saved at the last minute, and continued the next season thanks to a TV deal with TSN. A women's event was introduced in 2006. From 2007 to 2009, it was a qualifying tournament for the

Canadian Olympic Curling Trials The Canadian Olympic Curling Trials, marketed from 2009 through 2017 as the Roar of the Rings, are a quadrennial tournament held by Curling Canada that determines the Canadian men's and women's representatives for curling at the Winter Olympics. The ...

, and had barred foreign teams from entering (unlike the other Slams). Scotland's

Eve Muirhead Eve Muirhead (born 22 April 1990) is a Scottish former curler from Perth and the skip of the British Olympic Curling team. Muirhead and the GB team became Olympic champions at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, having previously won the bro ...

became the first non-Canadian skip to win the event in 2013, while Sweden's

Niklas Edin Johan Niklas Edin (born 6 July 1985) is a Swedish curler. He currently resides in Karlstad, which has been his curling home base since 2008. He holds several sport distinctions. He is the first and the only skip in World Curling Federation (WCF ...

became the first non Canadian skip to win the men's event in 2017. To date, Edmonton's Kevin Martin has won the most Players' Championships with 8. On the women's side,

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

Jennifer Jones Jennifer Jones (born Phylis Lee Isley; March 2, 1919 – December 17, 2009), also known as Jennifer Jones Simon, was an American actress and mental health advocate. Over the course of her career that spanned over five decades, she was nominated ...

(and her long-time second,

Jill Officer Jill Officer (born June 2, 1975) is a Canadian curler from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Officer played second for the teams skipped by Jennifer Jones from 2003 to 2018 and while they were juniors. The team won a gold medal while representing Canada at ...

) have won the most championships with 6. Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, both the 2020 Players' Championship and the 2020 Champions Cup were cancelled.

Qualification

The top 12 teams on the men's and women's WCT year-to-date rankings respectively qualify for the event. Teams that decline their invitations are replaced by the next highest ranked team.

Format

The 2022 event was a triple knockout. From 2014 to 2019, the event featured 12 teams split into two pools of six which competed in a round robin. The top 8 teams advance to a single game elimination playoff. The event has been held in its current format since 2014. In 2021, the number of teams earning playoff berths was reduced to six.

Past champions

Men

Women

References

External links

* {{Grand Slam of Curling Players' Championship Men's Grand Slam (curling) events Women's Grand Slam (curling) events Annual sporting events in Canada