What's the magic element?

Club Pairs quarter-final this afternoon. Played over eighteen ends, our opponents promise to be stiff competition. And so it proves in the first three ends. They keep getting shot bowl to go 0-3 up.

On end six things start to change. Playing as skip, I should have noticed we had all the back bowls. They're lying with two close shots. Deliberately play slightly heavy to break up the head. Manage to push the jack through for us to go six up! Their skip reduces that to four before I roll another in. Five to us.

After gaining a lead they're fighting back. We're just ahead, 11-10. A six on end eleven and we never look back. Could have finished early but the game was so enjoyable we play to the end.

No wonder the game felt so much closer than the 29-12 result. We won ten ends, they won eight. The difference was our average win was by 3, theirs 1.5.

Really on fire. Hardly a bowl off line and drawing close to the jack when required. Why? Was it that I was again using secondary aiming points, and to great effect? Or maybe that I was wearing my new, very comfortable, spectacles rather than contact lenses and seeing more clearly? Not sure, but if I keep this form up maybe the current three semi-finals and three quarter-finals out of seven competitions entered will convert into more than one appearance on Finals Day. Here's this afternoon's scorecard.