The Asham World Curling Tour is a group of curling bonspiels featuring the best male curlers in the world. A Women's World Curling Tour also exists.
Contents
History
The World Curling Tour was created in 1992. In 2001, the WCT introduced a series of Grand Slam events for men which was later followed in 2006 by Grand Slam events for women. These became known as the Grand Slam of Curling and featured large payouts. Originally, curlers who participated in Grand Slam events were obliged to not participate in their respective Brier playdowns, however this was quickly rescinded.
Most WCT events are held in the Fall, and early Winter to avoid competing with the Brier playdowns.
The WCT is experimenting with length of games in two interesting ways. The first is that the games are only eight ends long with a 4th end break. The second is that the time clocks only count "thinking time", so the clock goes off when the players throw the rock. The reason is that time clocks, an innovation created to speed up the game, would stop as soon as the stone stopped.With the old system where teams were given 73 minutes of time if a team was losing, they would throw more draw shots which take time. The team that is winning throws more hits and thus ends up with more time if needed. So the WCT moved to "Thinking time" to even out this discrepancy. With this new system, each team is given 40 minutes of “Thinking Time” plus an additional 5 minutes if the game goes to an extra end.
The team with the most winnings at the end of the year wins the Founders Trophy. The winners in 2007 were Kevin Martin's team who won a total of $176,000.
A Women's World Curling Tour also exists, and is now affiliated with the WCT.
As of 2013, the Women’s World Curling Tour begins its debut in mid-August with the Fort Wayne Summer Cash Spiel and has events taking place all throughout the curling season until the Players Championship in mid-April. The men’s begins in mid-August as well with the Oakville OCT Fall Classic and then finishes with the women at the Players Championship. Each of the bonspiel events on the World Curling tour and Women’s World Curling Tour lasts for approximately 3 days with a final payoff ranging in the thousands of dollars for the winners. There are 4 major men’s tournaments and 5 major women’s tournaments that are held throughout the year, each with a final cash prize of $100,000 for the winning team. For the men these major tournaments are the Masters of Curling, the Canadian Open, the Syncrude Nationals and the Players championship. For the women, the major tournaments are the Curlers Corner Autumn Gold Curling Classic, Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Women's Classic, the Masters of Curling, the Colonial Square Ladies Classic, and the Players Championship. There also used to be 2 more grand slam events for the women called Sobeys Slam and Wayden Transportation Ladies Classic but these were discontinued in 2010. Together, these events are known as Grand Slam events because of the large payoff that is associated with them as well as the number of high-level curlers that play in these tournaments.
On October 2, 2006, the license of rights for the Grand Slam of Curling was sold to Insight Sports Ltd. but was later sold again in August 2012 to Rogers Communications. The WCT naming rights were then sold to Asham, a long time contributor to the sport, until 2014 and because of this, the World Curling Tour was renamed Asham’s World Curling Tour. The Grand slam was originally simply called the Grand Slam of Curling until 2008 when the rights were sold by the CBC to Capitol One bank which renamed the Grand Slam the Capitol One grand Slam of Curling. Unlike the other World Curling Tour events, these Grand Slams they are played in 8-end games as opposed to the usual 10 end games found in the other WCT events. Another new rule that was first put into practice at the men’s nationals in 2014 is the 5 rock rule which increased the 4 rock rule and free guard zone rule by another rock. This changed the starting strategy of the game as the team with the hammer was able to throw up two guards uncontested instead of the usual 1 allowed with the previously used 4 rock rule. Through the addition of the Grand slam events and the new rule changes, the WCT is rapidly becoming a well known series to sports fans worldwide.
Men's Events
As of the 2015-16 curling season
Women's events
As of 2011–12 curling season
Grand Slam events indicated in bold.
Events with an asterisk (*) indicate events held in the 2010–11 curling season but not yet announced as included in the 2011–12 season.