Ronnie O’Sullivan he plants it. clean. Almost careless. Then, half a beat before the applause catches up, he is gone.
That’s the problem with him at this point in his pursuit of an eighth world title. He never quite commits to giving you the calculation, but everything is both inevitable and a little improvised at the same time, as if the table bends to his decisions. You sit there and think there should be more human friction, more risk and more hesitancy in the shot selection. It doesn’t. Or maybe it does, but it’s buried.
But numbers don’t do frames.
“Doesn’t need the ninth…” You hear that all the time. The legacy is his already. Go away. Keep the legend alive. Then the argument starts to look a bit messy as you watch him thread three cushions to land on a red that shouldn’t be an option.
You learn very little and everything at the same time, from the first round matches. He can hit in patches while floating through a session, 4-4 at the interval, then flip the script in a single frame of 139 or 142, depending on how well the break goes. Not too bad. A little bit. And then catastrophe.
But the field has moved on. Judd Trump has altered his attacking tempo. Kyren Wilson exhibits a dogged tactical resistance that never falters when he is put under pressure. O’Sullivan does not wait for the younger generation to fail. They set the pace and force him to react. That would make him nervous in the day. Now it is just a matter of adjustment.
long safety game
There’s a moment that happens every season. He plays a long safety game, waits, observes and pushes the white into uncomfortable positions, not trying to be the top dog straight away. A more adventurous version of him would have tried earlier. This version occasionally ends the patience game after five or six shots and then abruptly breaks it with one pot that changes the temperature of the frame.
Then he sits down, as if he’s finished with it already, his expression inscrutable.
This side of him gets lost in the case for the seventh title often. It isn’t detailed about his cue case but it does mention domination, peak score and the 2013-2020 rhythm when he looked good enough to win tournaments. At his best that player averaged more than 40 century breaks per season and won titles in bursts that made scheduling seem optional.
current environment
However, in the current environment, there are no bursts available. It offers attrition.
So the question shifts. Not if he’s still able to beat everyone on a good day. He can. But can he survive seven consecutive games at the pace of the World Championship, with long sessions and margins so tight that one missed safety can ruin the rhythm of a whole day?
He has reached the later levels often enough to suggest the answer is yes. The semis are yet to be staged. Finals are still looming. Then something gives way. Missed a long red ball at 8-8. A slight lean in the direction of safety. little places. does not collapse. Just opportunities now more effectively taken up by others.
Critics have a simple explanation for everything: age. But aging doesn’t create century breaks from nothing or bad reds at a distance. Only the time to recover between frames, tournaments and decisions to participate in events at all are changed. The more brutal truth is that he now picks his spots, which changes the tempo of competitive accumulation.
boredom
Yet boredom is rarely long-lived at the Crucible. Everything is squeezed in the ring. One poor session and the tournament turns. History starts when a session is a success.
The counterargument that keeps coming up is that eight championships would not change who he is today. And statistically speaking it is perhaps accurate. Seven of them and he’s already one of the greatest players ever. No need for the ninth. It’s a separation.
But sport is not only a question of need. It is built on artificial thresholds, waiting for someone to cross one.
quarterfinal run
Lately he showed both sides of himself in the same match during a quarterfinal run. Early frames were built with simple control, 72 clearance, 89 break and clinical safety. Then he had a mid-session lapse, losing three frames in a row, all of them decided by safety exchanges where he sat a little bit longer over the shot than usual. Not really pulling punches. More like a half-second lagging recalibration.
The reaction was a 131 clearing, so the momentum change was cancelled out completely. No holidays. A quick glance at the scoreboard was just an administrative task to quickly change the cue tip, such as the frame.
This disparity sustains the discussion. He has both players inside of him still. The steady scorer and the sporadic hangback. The first must be more frequent than the second over a ten-day period in Sheffield for eight titles. basic requirement. brutal murder.
defeats taken Like a Champ
After some defeats he walks out on some evenings with hardly a change of expression. No theatre, no falling down. Just a silent recognition that the wrong time had come. Fans interpreted it as detachment. Longer viewers get something else: calculations that go beyond the table to decide how much effort the season is worth.
Here, the 9th title argument is often unsuccessful. It is based on linear ambition.