And he has a stern task, coming up against Scotland's Stephen Maguire, a winner of four ranking events during his career.
The verdict: It's no stretch of credulity to suggest that every team in Group A will fancy their chances of racking up points at home and Scotland face a stern task unless they can improve a poor record on the road.
They have a sterner task in the semifinal against Poland, which has also been playing superbly and winning its matches easily.
He purports to bow to at least one authority: his wife, Shanté Broadus, as stern a task-master as the wife of Tracy Jordan on "30 Rock," though less comically shrill.
Leading the choral passages, as the narrator, is the excellent Quentin Earl Darrington, who also has the rather thankless task of playing stern sentinel for the duration of the show, looking on with unspoken concern, tall staff in hand.
As a tamer of moods, Ms. Clarke brings a stern schoolteacher's gaze to the task, as well as a withering wit and a daring sense of fashion.
Up to now, he has been consistently and wrongly portrayed as a stern black exceptionalist who takes Negroes to task for not meeting his standard.
He was born too late in the century, in 1940, to believe that he was abusing his body, that his sight would be impaired, or that God watched with stern incredulity as he bent daily to the task.
Mr. Mundie, in his speech at Stern on May 3, took the open-source approach to task, essentially calling it bad for business and a threat to the intellectual property of software companies.
The Pacers insisted Monday that there were adjustments to be made, although the task of dealing with James and the shooters that surround him present a stern test.
