Ronnie O’Sullivan admits World Championship doubt after shock defeat

Ronnie O’Sullivan says he will ‘probably’ play at the World Championship next month, but admits he did not expect to compete in Sheffield as recently as last week.

The Rocket reached the final of the World Open in Yushan this week, making snooker history in the quarter-finals when he made a break of 153, the highest in the history of the sport.

The 50-year-old looked excellent on his run to the showpiece, with wins over the likes of Shaun Murphy, Ryan Day and Wu Yize, displaying the best form he has shown for some time.

O’Sullivan was favourite in the final against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and was an extremely short price when he raced into a 4-0 lead.

However, the 40-year-old Thai then reeled off six frames on the spin to shockingly take control of the match.

The Englishman responded with three centuries in as many frames as he regained the lead, but Un-Nooh was unfazed, making breaks of 77, 132, a maximum 147 and 131 to secure a 10-7 victory in sparkling style.

O’Sullivan was looking on the bright side of a good string of wins in Yushan, feeling more comfortable and confident in his game than he has for some time, despite the disappointment of defeat to Un-Nooh.

He is expecting to be at the Crucible, but says he may well not have been if he had not found something on the table in recent days after a season of relative inactivity compared to his rivals.

‘I can only take one day, one week at a time. I can’t look any further than a week at the moment, with my career,’ said the seven-time world champion. ‘I’ve not been playing for a reason, just because I haven’t had a game good enough to compete. So I’ve been trying to find that on the practice table and hopefully bring it to the match table.

‘I’ve had quite a good year, really. I felt like I played really quite good at the start of the season, better than I was, and then I had a dip for a couple of months. January and February wasn’t good and I thought “here we go,” but I’ve managed to pull it back a little bit.

‘We’ll just see how it goes. I wasn’t even going to play in the World Championship 10 days ago because I was too scared. I felt like I would embarrass myself. But now I feel I probably will go, because I feel like I might pot a few balls. It’s not great, I’m not in a great, great place with it, but I’m better than I was maybe two weeks ago.’

O’Sullivan was full of praise for the champion and felt that Un-Nooh was producing a standard he could not match after making tweaks to his technique.

‘It’s been a positive week. Thepchaiya was unbelievable, deserves his victory, he played much better than me today,’ said O’Sullivan. ‘I watched his game yesterday in the semi-finals, he was strong. I couldn’t go with that, he was far too good for me.

My game’s not good enough to go to that level, simple as that. It used to be. Everyone’s played okay against me this week, so my game is good enough to beat players playing okay.

‘I just can’t get to the potting angle of certain shots, I can play maybe 60-70 per cent of shots comfortably, but there’s other shots I just don’t have in my locker. When someone plays like that, I’m just one-dimensional, really. It limits what I can do and the amount of pressure I can put on my opponent. I just have to accept that’s how it is.

‘On the whole I’m in a much better place now that I was in the last three years and I was two weeks ago. But it could easily fall apart and be in a bad place again soon. I’m just taking each day and week as it comes. Not getting too excited or too down.’

The rampant champion deserved the last word, though, with the Rocket saying: ‘He was unbelievable. Some of the balls he potted and the break-building and how fast he does it. I felt like a really slow, negative player. I thought, this is scary! Incredible.’

A stunning victory, worth £175,000, made all the more special by his opponent and the 147 in the penultimate frame, Un-Nooh said: ‘After being sat on my chair watching Ronnie make three centuries, I told myself this is a great final and to enjoy it.

‘I don’t know how what happened after the interval came true. I can’t believe it. I’m still stunned with my performance. How did I do that? Sometimes snooker is one way traffic. To make a 147 in the final against Ronnie O’Sullivan in a final is a great honour.

‘This is my first time winning a major event and this is the biggest prize of my career. It is a dream come true and a step forward. I want to make snooker come back to be as famous as it used to be in Thailand. Like the old times.’

Un-Nooh had not been to a ranking quarter-final since 2022 and climbs from number 39 to 22 in the world thanks to his scintillating win.

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