Scottish Open 2020 - 'If I could go out and play like Ronnie O'Sullivan I would,' says Mark Selby

ByTom Adams

Updated 08/12/2020 at 08:28 GMT

Scottish Open 2020 - Mark Selby was in first-round action on Monday but saw his match delayed by hours due to Covid testing issues, before eventually opening his title defence with a win. Speaking afterwards to Eurosport, he discussed his famous style and why, if he could, he would play like Ronnie O'Sullivan.

Mark Selby says that if he had the ability to play with the natural flair of Ronnie O’Sullivan he would do it “tomorrow”, as he discussed his own approach to the game with Eurosport.

Selby was speaking after having to suffer lengthy delays to his first-round match at the Scottish Open against Yuan Sijun, which he eventually won 4-1 but only after his lunchtime match was moved to the evening as the schedule in Milton Keynes took a battering due to some delayed Covid testing.

Selby is known for his more attritional style and notably clashed with O’Sullivan in the World Champonship when in their semi-final, O’Sullivan refused to engage with some cagey play and smashed the white, which Selby described as “disrespectful”.

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But speaking to Andy Goldstein in the Eurosport studio, Selby insisted he doesn’t enjoy getting into protracted safety battles and scrappy frames.

• See all of Monday's results and the adjusted Scottish Open calendar

“I mean obviously I don't go out there and think right ‘I'm gonna get 50 in front and put all the balls on the cushion’, that's not my strategy when I get out there, it's just if you're on a 50 break and you run out of position, it's common sense to try and put a colour safe or a ball safe,” Selby told Eurosport.

“I don't enjoy it. I mean I'd rather go out there and just go crash bang wallop, 100 after 100, I mean that'd be more enjoyable to do that. But at the same time I enjoy the challenge. I don't enjoy obviously going into matches thinking, right, it's going to be, every frame is going to be scrappy in 45, 50 minutes long. A bit like the boring players, like Neil and Judd!

Selby on playing like Ronnie, and his Covid-disrupted day

If I could go out and play like Ronnie I would have that tomorrow, of course, but not everyone's as naturally gifted.

“You’re not going to go out there and make one-visits every single frame, it’s more or less impossible. You're going to get scrappy frames and you're gonna go out there and play bad matches. You have to enjoy the challenge of trying to scrap it out as well.”

Speaking about the delays which caused havoc on Monday and have led to a packed Tuesday schedule, the defending champion said the wait posed problems.

“Once you're out there the adrenaline kicks in, just sitting around doing nothing, you just feel fatigued just sitting there, but it's difficult, especially today because you just can't prepare with what's going on, it was difficult to prepare for it,” Selby said.

“You eat and stuff and do all your preparations right and you'll have a practice for 20 minutes, you have a sandwich. And then before you know it, you're not going on and a few hours go by and then you get hungry again and it's crazy.”

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