Curling Hammer Efficiency

It is essential to score two or more points when your team has the hammer. Therefore, if your team is able to score two or more points with the hammer, your team is “hammer efficient”.

Hammer Efficiency

The hammer efficiency statistic reveals the frequency that your team scores two or more points with the hammer. This statistic is calculated by counting all of the times your team scored two or more points with the hammer, and dividing it by the amount of times your team scored with the hammer. This statistic excludes all the ends that were blanked during the game.

Over the course of a season, you want your team to be “hammer efficient”. It is best if your team keeps this statistic as high as possible throughout the season. The higher your team’s hammer efficiency, the better.

Let’s think about this idea for a moment. For every time your team is not “hammer efficient”, your team is only scoring one point with the hammer. Therefore, your team is wasting opportunities to score two or more points with the hammer.

Understanding Hammer Efficiency

As curling becomes more competitive, the chances that teams steal ends from each other becomes significantly less. Thus, every time your team does not score two points or more with the hammer, you are allowing your opponent to have a chance of defeating you.

If we assume an ideal curling situation in which teams constantly score with the hammer, thus alternating which team has the hammer each end, your team will only have four opportunities to score with the hammer. Therefore, if you are unable to be hammer efficient in one of those four ends, you may lose the game. Alternatively, both teams may be hammer efficient, but one team may score more than 2 points with the hammer (which still constitutes a team being hammer efficient). Therefore, your team must be hammer efficient, and score more than 2 points each time your team has the hammer in order to defeat your opponent.