Snooker betting tips: Tour Championship
2pts Four or more Match Centuries in Barry Hawkins v Ronnie O'Sullivan match at 5/4 (Sky Bet)
0.5pt Five or more Match Centuries in Barry Hawkins v Ronnie O'Sullivan match at 11/4 (Sky Bet)
0.5pt Six or more Match Centuries in Barry Hawkins v Ronnie O'Sullivan match at 13/2 (Sky Bet)
Ronnie O’Sullivan has won more ranking titles than any other player in the history of the sport. Thirty-seven to be precise. It is a remarkable number that will prove hard for anyone to surpass, even a hungry and dominant Judd Trump.
Yet O’Sullivan would be justified in thinking he should be much closer to 40 by now, having reached four major finals already this season and lost them all. If we’re throwing the word remarkable around, that statistic is about as remarkable as it gets.
It’s not that O’Sullivan is invincible – as he was when winning this event and three more significant titles in the 2018/2019 season – but he is still one of the elite players in the game, producing snooker good enough to claim his sixth world title as recently as August and form strong enough to consistently carry him to business end of tournaments.
His standard of play, particularly since Christmas, has been very high and as such, that he wasn’t able to brush aside Jordan Brown in the Welsh Open final, or even compete with John Higgins in the Tour Championship equivalent, will have rankled. This is a champion snooker player – the greatest champion of them all – and winning big matches in big tournaments, against his biggest rivals, is what O’Sullivan prides himself on. Losing finals to Trump, Mark Selby and Higgins won’t sit right and will have surely left him determined to finish the job this week.
It certainly looked that way when the 45-year-old exacted swift revenge on Higgins in the Tour Championship opener on Monday and with the Scot and Trump now out of the title running, O’Sullivan’s path to his second victory appears, on the surface at least, to be that little bit easier.
Of course, he must firstly get past Trump’s conqueror, Barry Hawkins, on Saturday, before a possible final with Selby or Neil Robertson. Still, he has a couple of high-profile victories over Hawkins already this season while he's patently in better shape now than when Selby thrashed him in the Scottish Open final.
Aside from the aforementioned defeat to Brown at the Welsh Open, a match which he began as a long odds-on favourite, I really do think this is O’Sullivan’s best chance yet to go to 38 ranking-title wins, but he’ll have to play well to again get the better of Hawkins; a resurgent character of late and one who has made two semi-finals already since the turn of the year.
Hawkins really ought to have finished Trump off at the German Masters, but he put that right on Thursday when again scoring well and he’ll be well aware that he needs more of the same if he is to put it up to O’Sullivan.
That was certainly the case when this pair played out a high-class semi-final at the Players Championship recently; Hawkins knocking in breaks of 109, 87 and 81 despite losing 6-4, while O’Sullivan produced runs of 90, 83, 79 and 75 himself.
Quite how there was only one century in that match remains a mystery as both players missed numerous gilt-edged opportunities to convert to three figures, and I can’t helping think this match will be another high-scoring affair. O’Sullivan’s play in an around the black has remained consistently top-notch and with Hawkins seemingly back on song, you just have expect more big breaks.
Despite now reaching 1100 career centuries, O’Sullivan can occasionally be indifferent when chasing three figures, while Hawkins, too, wouldn’t always convert to three figures with the regularity you might expect from someone who wins so many frames in one visit.
That does temper enthusiasm for a centuries bet a little – and perhaps Spread bettors would prefer to buy 50-Ups in this one – but in a best-of-19-frames match, I do think the 5/4 on offer with Sky Bet for FOUR OR MORE MATCH CENTURIES is solid while five or more (11/4), or even six or more (13/2), isn’t out of the question.
I’ll split my stakes accordingly in the hope that the greatest break-builder of all time can trade blows with one of the tour’s in-form players and produce a blitz of big breaks worthy of a Saturday slot on ITV4.
Preview posted at 1310 GMT 26/03/12
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