Robyn Munro and Orrin Carson suffered their first defeat of the Booster Juice World Junior Mixed Doubles Championship in Edmonton as they came up against an in-form Chinese pairing, but the Scottish duo could draw on the experience of their World University Games (WUGS) gold run as they prepared to come back fighting.
The nature of their 8-3 loss to Shumo Zhu and Hongchen Li bore striking similarities to their 10-4 defeat at the hands of Germany in the third of their round-robin matches at WUGS in January where they recovered in exceptional fashion to win every remaining match before beating the Germans in the final.
In their meeting with China they were up against it from the outset, failing to win last stone advantage for the first time in the competition and immediately falling two behind as Zhu played the first of several key last stones. 
After being forced to take just a single at the next, they were in deep trouble when Zhu was on target again to register a three at the third end and another Chinese three at the fifth end effectively wrapped up the match, with Carson subsequently admitting that it could have been worse.
“We didn’t play great to be honest,” he said.
“Robyn made a couple of clutch shots to keep us in the game, otherwise it could have been over long before it was.”
For her part, Munro acknowledged that it had been a reversal of their experience in their opening two matches against Austria and Australia.
“Not getting the hammer unfortunately set the tone for that game and they got a two at the first end and they both played really well,” she said.
“They hardly missed a shot and really capitalised on our mistakes.
“We struggled a bit with our draw weight, which is so important in mixed doubles, so they controlled the scoring area and we tried our best to put some pressure on, but even then she made a great shot for three in the third end after I thought I did all I could.”
However, she pointed to that WUGS success in January in making it clear that there was no danger of them becoming despondent.
“We’ve had tough losses like this before though, especially at WUGS where we lost the third game against Germany and managed to bounce back for a run of wins to get the gold medal, beating them in the final,” said Munro.
“If that’s how this week has to go then we knew that was going to be one of the toughest games in our group, so it’s just about coming out firing tomorrow.”
After a wait of more than 24 hours between the win over Australia and getting back on the ice against China, they are also now looking forward to having two games on the fourth day of action, facing Hungary and Brazil.
“We had a long break between our last game and this one, so it’s good to have two games tomorrow and we’ll be looking to start strong early and get back to winning ways,” said Munro.
The Scots meet Hungary at 4pm BST, then Brazil at 11 pm BST.
Schedule and results:
Tuesday 6 May
Session 2 – 9pm (BST)
Scotland – Austria 9-2
Wednesday 7 May
Session 4 – 4pm
Scotland – Australia 10-1
Thursday 8 May
Session 9 – 9pm
Scotland – China 3-8
Friday 9 May
Session 11- 4pm
Scotland – Hungary
Session 13 – 11pm
Scotland – Brazil
Saturday 10 May
Session 15 – 4pm
Scotland – USA
Quarter Finals 1am
Sunday 11 May
Semi Finals 5pm
Final 10pm
Watch select streamed games on Curling Stadium Edmonton YouTube Channel
Team Scotland
Robyn Munro
Orrin Carson
Scott Andrews - Coach
Nancy Smith – Head Coach
