Neal Foulds column: Ronnie O'Sullivan snooker's dominant force again as focus turns to World Championship bid
What Ronnie O’Sullivan is doing right now is incredible. In sporting terms, never mind snooker, we are witnessing greatness in front of our eyes and just when we think we might be at the beginning of the end, he comes again and reminds us that even now, at 48 years of age, he is still the man.
He is an amazing sportsman. The youngest and the oldest winner of the UK Championship, that record chalked up only last month, and now confirmed as the youngest and the oldest player to win the Masters only a few weeks ago. All topped off with victory at last week’s World Grand Prix. More records, more memories, more of that Ronnie magic. It’s bonkers, really, beyond belief.
Even now, he is as dominant as ever, as far ahead of his peers that I can ever remember.
He is in the realms of dominance that we haven’t seen since Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis. He’s number one in the rankings, he’s got so many points in the bank he might need to open another account soon, and he’s in the envious position of probably needing to pick and choose from here until the World Championship to ensure he isn’t overcooked by the time Sheffield comes around.
He’ll miss next week’s German Masters, which is a huge loss for the event, but perfectly understandable all the same.
Ronnie is now 15 matches unbeaten, which is staggering in itself, but when you consider that those wins span two Triple Crown tournaments, the hardest events to win, it’s clear that we are talking about complete and utter domination. And it’s not just his play on the table. He has an air of invincibility that Hendry had, that Davis had, but that I wasn’t sure a 48-year-old could have, not even Ronnie.
Is he as good as he was in 2013 when he won the World Championship after taking a year off? I’m not sure he is, but he can win in different ways now. He might not be able to produce the jaw-dropping session of snooker we saw in semi-final defeat of Ding Junhui at the World Grand Prix quite so often, but he’s prepared to roll his sleeves up nowadays and win when he’s not at his best.
He'll grind out victories in matches he might have lost 10 years ago, and where we always used to think of him as a brilliant, almost unstoppable frontrunner, he is now so hard to shake off even if starting matches slowly and falling behind. It was that way in the Masters final against Ali Carter and again when trailing Judd Trump in the final of the World Grand Prix last week. He just wouldn’t buckle and eventually, he broke his opponents down.
Dr Stephen Peters must take plenty of credit for his input, and Ronnie says that himself. His attitude rarely lets him down nowadays, and to beat O’Sullivan you know you’re generally going to have to play somewhere close to your best. The harsh reality is that even the best players don’t seem capable of doing that right now, and I'm not sure many believe they can beat him.
And as we have always said, if O’Sullivan plays his best, he’s almost impossible to beat. His scoring is always deadly, his unrivalled positional play ensures that, but when his long game is on point like it was in Leicester, you can’t see him losing too many matches. Ronnie’s long game isn’t always as strong as it was last week, but when that facet of his game clicks, there are no chinks in his armour.
He can’t keep winning every week, of course he can’t, but right now, when he’s playing well, it’s hard to see who steps up to take him down. The tournament organisers in Germany might be disappointed he isn’t in Berlin, but the other players will be relieved.
One man who will be particularly happy to see the back of Ronnie is Ding, denied late in the UK Championship final and completely blown away in that session of their semi-final at the World Grand Prix. It was simply awesome stuff from Ronnie, and my ITV colleague Ken Doherty described it as the best session of snooker he’s ever seen.
I wouldn’t want to completely nail my colours to that mast, but most of the best sessions in the history of snooker involve Ronnie – his 6-0 drubbing of Ricky Walden at the Masters in 2014, when notching 556 points without reply, is another performance I’ll never forget.
What a player he’s been, and what a player he continues to be. A truly remarkable sportsman.
If the match with Ding was memorable for its quality, his defeat of Carter at the Masters will be remembered for different reasons. The match and whole furore around the final was unsavoury, we can’t get away from that. The two have history and it showed, but that probably inspired Ronnie. Once again, he dug deep to win a match he might’ve lost a few years ago.
Carter played really well in the afternoon session and put Ronnie under pressure, but I think that spurred Ronnie on and he got stronger and stronger as things developed. Carter wasn’t the same player as he saw his hopes of a maiden Triple Crown win slip away, but all credit to Ronnie who just wouldn’t be beaten.
Attention now turns to Berlin for a tournament that I have a lot of time for. The Tempodrom is one of the best venues I’ve been to and when it gets to finals weekend, it’s as good as anywhere in the world to watch snooker. People who say otherwise haven’t been and experienced it for themselves.
The support for snooker in Germany is fantastic and the enthusiasm for the sport helps deliver a wonderful atmosphere for the players to play in. We have a Belgian world champion now, and a German Masters extended to seven days this year, so I think we are seeing some really positive signs for snooker on the continent.
Carter will return as defending champion, and the two-time German Masters winner will no doubt fancy his chances again. He’s a tough cookie, on and off the table, and he won’t be fazed by all the noise from his latest spat with Ronnie. It might well light the fire in his belly.
He won’t be the only big name desperate to do well in Berlin, though. Carter’s results have been good all season, but for people like Mark Selby and Neil Robertson, they will be very keen for a deep run somewhere, not just for the ranking points, but to try and gain some confidence and momentum ahead of a crucial juncture in the season.
We often talk about trying to peak for the World Championship, but Robertson certainly won’t be thinking about that. He needs to find some form now, and someone like Kyren Wilson, who has a terrific record in this event, is the same.
For Ronnie, you get the sense that from here on in, it’s all about Sheffield. I hope and think we’ll see him in the big ITV events coming up, but he has said he’ll be managing his workload from now until April and you can’t really blame him. Whenever we do see him, he’ll be the man to beat, but his focus appears to have already shifted to the Crucible.
There aren’t many things that Ronnie O’Sullivan hasn’t achieved in snooker, but winning all three Triple Crown events in the same season is one of those things. How utterly ridiculous that in what should be the final act of his illustrious career, he holds all the cards, most of the trophies, and a wave of public support that will mean 8, 8, 8 is never far from the minds of snooker fans from now until the spring.