(by Al Cameron)

CHARLOTTETOWN — There is no question that Amber Holland raised some eyebrows here seven days ago with the following pronouncement.
She’d just been asked if a desire to be included in the group of female skips considered “elite” in Canada was serving as a motivating factor for her at the Scotties.
“I probably consider myself among the best in the country,” said Holland at the time. “I’ve been playing this game for too long, I’ve been skipping for a lot of years, and I’ve played all of these teams and had success against these teams — just maybe not in this venue. But I consider myself among the elite already.”
Now, everybody should have the same opinion. If there were doubts before about whether she belonged in the discussion, there should be none now thanks to a gutsy performance in the Scotties final tonight against Jennifer Jones.
Lost in the shuffle of the drama of the 10th end, when Jones’s last rock angle-raise takeout failed to curl enough to give Saskatchewan the stolen victory, was the road Holland, Kim Schneider, Tammy Schneider and Heather Kalenchuk had to travel to make Jones have to throw the last rock in the 10th end.
Remember the first end? Holland could have taken the safe route back in the first by making an open hit with her last rock to concede a deuce to Team Canada. Instead, she decided to play a nervy freeze to a Canadian rock buried behind a corner guard. She was a foot heavy and bounced into the open, giving Jones an open hit for three.
That would have crushed plenty of teams out there. Not Saskatchewan.
Holland executed what has to be considered the best clutch shot she’s ever made — with all due respect to her double takeout that won her a Players’ Championship a few years ago — when she made a back-12 weight tap to score three and tie the game in the sixth end. And while that was a terrific shot, it should be noted, too, that Jones had a chance to kill the end by leaving her last-rock draw a foot or two shorter, at the top of the button. Typical of her night, which ended with a 68 per cent shooting percentage, the refinement we’ve come to expect from Jones when it comes to skip rocks was missing, and it let Holland off the hook.
The same can be said about Jones’s first rock in the 10th end, when she had a fairly open hit on Holland’s stone at the top four. If she nose-hits the rock, Holland loses. Instead, Jones’s rock drifted wide and rolled to the side, leaving Holland the same path to the button she had with her first rock. And this time, she dead-buried it.
Click  for full story in the Calgary Herald.