Players Championship: Why Ronnie O'Sullivan's whitewash defeat to Mark Selby could inspire snooker GOAT before Crucible
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Updated 23/02/2024 at 16:26 GMT
Ronnie O'Sullivan's heavy 6-0 defeat to old rival Mark Selby in the quarter-finals of the Players Championship in Telford was a surprising scoreline, but will mean little moving forward. His setback against Selby was the fourth time O'Sullivan has been whitewashed by an opponent in the past three years, but history suggests the world No. 1 tends to bounce back strongly from such odd outcomes.
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When Ronnie O'Sullivan lost 6-2 to Judd Trump in the quarter-finals of the 2012 Masters, there were more than a few naysayers apparently willing to write up his obituary.
The line trotted out back then was that this was a 'changing of the guard' moment after the snooker GOAT was bundled out of the maiden staging of the Masters at London's Alexandra Palace by the then 22-year-old Bristolian.
One recalls putting this point to the 1984 Masters winner Jimmy White, who was quick to give such soundbites short shrift as he backed O'Sullivan to recover strongly ahead of the 36th World Championship in Sheffield.
"Of course, you look at O'Sullivan," said the Whirlwind of old London town. "You never know what he is going to do. He can be fantastic one minute. He is the most naturally gifted player I've seen, and he is getting whacked by Trump at the moment. So it is all good for the game.
"Ronnie is taking it well. I know O'Sullivan, and he will be out to put this all right by the World Championship."
As it turned out, Trump's masterful moment was not like Roger Federer turning over Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 2001.
White's prediction was about as accurate as Back to the Future's Marty McFly heading for the bookies after picking up a copy of the old Sports Almanac.
A month after the Masters at Ally Pally, O'Sullivan set about making amends.
He ended a three-year wait for a ranking title by lifting the German Masters in Berlin with a 9-7 win over an on-fire Stephen Maguire – a figure who prodded home three straight tons on his way to a 6-3 lead – before defeating Ali Carter 18-11 in the world final to secure his fourth Crucible crown.
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While Trump progressed to add the 2019 world title to his growing body of work, O'Sullivan has revelled in another four of the finest in the same time period. The point being that not much significance should be attached to solitary defeats in snooker. Or probably any sport.
Like night follows day in such darkened environs, it is the very nature of snooker that players can get rolled over as much as the balls run when the mood takes them.
O'Sullivan has never done anything by half measures in snooker. His 6-0 filleting by Mark Selby in the quarter-finals of the Players Championship on Thursday evening was perhaps surprising and a dent to personal pride, but it would be dangerous to clamp too much meaning to such a scoreline when your opponent is approaching peak form.
"By a long stretch," said Selby when asked if it was his best performance of the season.
The four-time world champion produced breaks of 65, 91 81, 105 and 59 in reaching the semi-finals with his long game also standing up. "If you can’t get up for playing Ronnie with a full crowd, which he always brings, then you are in the wrong game. That is where you want to test yourself."
O'Sullivan's only regret will perhaps be in failing to put on a better show for the vast gathering of fans who turned out to watch him at the Telford International Centre.
Heavy defeats at such an elite level are hardly fresh news to the seven-time world champion, who has seen and done it all in his vocation, including suffering some serious drubbings during his golden 32-year career. They all tend to be outliers.
He was swamped 6-0 by an inspired Ding Junhui in the quarter-finals of the UK Championship last season before being whitewashed 5-0 by world No. 56 Tian Pengfei at the same stage of the Welsh Open.
Yet such recent history was not on Ding's side when he lost 10-7 to O'Sullivan in the final of the UK Championship a year later.
Conversely, O'Sullivan's first-round 6-1 win over Luca Brecel at last year's Masters was rendered meaningless when he shipped seven straight frames in a 13-10 defeat to the 'Belgian Bullet' in the World Championship quarter-finals.
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O'Sullivan also suffered a 5-0 whitewash loss to Hossein Vafaei in the first round of the German Masters three years ago, a figure he dismissed 13-2 in the second round of the World Championship in April and 6-2 in the semi-finals of the UK in December.
Funnily enough, in similar style to his defeat to Selby, it was also a match in which he smashed the reds up apparently without much thought amid some personal amusement.
If anything, such a defeat is likely to see him merely redouble his efforts in preparing to chase a record eighth title at the 48th World Championship in April.
O'Sullivan has been on a rousing run of form this season – including a pulsating 10-7 win over Selby in the semi-finals of the Shanghai Masters ahead of a 11-9 final success against world champion Brecel – before embarking upon trophy parades at the Masters, UK Championship and World Grand Prix.
His defeat to Selby ended a 16-match winning streak, but what goes up must come down in professional sport.
Such a sequence of wins had to come to an end with the treadmill of tournaments making snooker an impossible game to dominate as Trump – a winner this season in Wuhan, Belfast, Berlin and Brentwood – discovered in his 6-4 to loss to Carter in the last eight of the Players Championship a night earlier.
Losing 6-0 or 6-4 means little in the grand scheme of things. O'Sullivan's defeat to Selby was a minor setback to his self-belief in the wider potting picture.
Read as much or as little into it as you wish. It will likely have no impact upon his prospects for the rest of the campaign.
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