Eve Muirhead’s Scotland have work to do if they are to progress in the Le Gruyere European Curling Championships in Switzerland.
The Courier columnist’s rink went down to an extra end 9-8 defeat to Estonia on Tuesday.
Scotland faced an Estonian team still looking for their first win and it was Muirhead’s girls who took the early advantage, scoring two points in the first end and then moving into a 4-1 lead with another two points in the fourth end.
Estonia got themselves back on to level terms with two points in the seventh end and a scoreline of 5-5.
Scotland moved ahead in the eighth with two points and consolidated their lead with a single-point steal in the ninth for an 8-5 lead.
But a complete miss by skip Muirhead opened the door for Estonia in the tenth and their skip Maile Moelder drew her final stone into the house to score three points, tie the game at 8-8 and force the extra end.
Muirhead then came up light with her final draw and Estonia had their first win at 9-8.
However, Scotland made amends last night with victory over Germany in a one-sided game, with the Scots going into a 7-0 lead after three ends.
Mistakes by the German skip gave up a steal of two points in the second end when she was short and a further steal of three points in the third end with a draw that rolled on through the house.
Scotland emerged victorious with the final score 10-2 after seven ends.
Muirhead said: “We sharpened up on a lot of things that we didn’t do this morning and we did that well”.
Scotland’s men enjoyed a 6-5 win over the Czech Republic but later went down 6-5 to Russia, a result that puts their play-off medal hopes in jeopardy.