Personal Best: Curling couple heads north for taste of Olympics

Every winter since 2006, curlers Patrick Tabuchi and Matthew David have traveled from their home in San Francisco to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the Pacific Rim Cup.

David recalled some playful trash talking from opponents when the pair first competed in this annual gay and lesbian curling tournament.

“Look at those guys, they’re from California, they curl on sand,” David recalled hearing back in 2006. “Now we’re a force to be reckoned with.”

Partners on and off the ice, the Noe Valley residents will be heading north this winter, but not for the tournament.

Rather than competing in the annual bonspiel, Tabuchi and David will be spectators at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver with tickets to the men’s gold medal and women’s semifinal curling events.

Tabuchi, 31, first spotted curling on television in the early ’90s. “Wow, that looks like something we could do,” he recalls telling his family. It wasn’t until he moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles that he first took broom to hand and attempted the sport.

After attending a San Francisco Bay Area Curling Club open house at Sharks Ice in San Jose, Tabuchi was immediately hooked. It took a bit longer for David, a high school shot putter, to take to the sport, but he soon came around.

“I slowly got dragged in,” David said. “You meet the nicest people in the world; with curling there’s a big social side to the sport.”

David describes the sport as “shuffleboard on ice,” but Tabuchi shrugs off the comparison. He likens the sport to bocce ball or lawn bowling. In fact, the scoring system is similar to baseball. A curling match consists of eight or 10 “ends,” comparable to innings.

Two teams of four players alternate throwing the “rock,” 42 pounds of solid granite quarried on a remote island off the coast of Scotland. The “skip” quarterbacks the team, he rarely “sweeps,” and he is the team member that rolls the “hammer,” the all-important final eighth roll of the end.

Tabuchi, a structural engineer studying his masters degree at Cal, plays the skip or the “third” position, as he prefers the strategic side of what David describes a “real-life board game.” David, 38 and a native New Yorker, plays “lead” or “second.”

“They’re the workhorses,” Tabuchi said. “They have to sweep the most.” 

A self-officiated “gentleman’s sport,” each match begins with hand shakes and the traditional greeting of “Good Curling.” David points out that the first round of post-match beer is purchased by the winners.

Despite the temptation for free brews, they do play to win. At the Vacaville Crush Bonspiel in 2007, Tabuchi’s and David’s foursome lost by a score of 7-3 to the U.S. champions, a team that ultimately played in the world championships. 

San Francisco Bay Area Curling Club

Membership: From 20 before the 2006 Olympics to over 100 members at present

Facilities: Sharks Ice at San Jose, Sharks Ice at Fremont and the Oakland Ice Center (coming Spring 2010)

Teachers: Patrick Tabuchi and Matthew David, certified curling instructors

Info: www.bayareacurling.com