Ronnie O’Sullivan’s sixth world title definitely didn’t come to him without its challenges, or more specifically, its challengers. One could argue that out of his six World Championships, this past year proved to be the most difficult of his journeys to the trophy. If we look at his list of opponents during the 2020 WSC, we’ll quickly learn that his venture this year shouldn’t go unnoticed when matched with prior victories.
Round 1
This commenced with his first round match against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. Despite the score-line, at first glance, O’Sullivan certainly could have had an easier/less experienced opponent to face off against. Not to mention, someone with a similar style and pacing as himself. Much like other sports, styles make matches and O’Sullivan tends to find himself challenged when playing someone similar to himself i.e. Judd Trump. Nevertheless, O’Sullivan capitalised on the mistakes of Un-Nooh to breeze to victory in what was the fastest Crucible match in history at 108 minutes (10-1 victory).
Round 2
The simple pots missed by Un-Nooh in Round 1 were patched by his second round opponent, Ding Junhui, who seemingly didn’t miss at all when amongst the balls. This provided O’Sullivan with his first real challenge of the championship, particularly as he lost to Ding in their last WSC encounter in 2017. Despite O’Sullivan making trivial errors, he was able to maintain a level playing field against Ding at 4-4 and 8-8, before running away with it in the final session. This was partly aided by Ding’s poor long potting success, often winning his frames off the mistakes of his opponent.
Quarter-Finals
However, the tides did turn as O’Sullivan reached the quarter-finals to contest against Class of ’92 fellow, Mark Williams, whose long potting was fantastic. Things were looking very one-sided as Williams established a 7-2 lead, but during the second session O’Sullivan found some terrific form and nerve as he closed the gap to 8-8 and 10-10, to which point he ran away with victory in a match which saw him make five centuries and seven further 50+ breaks.
Semi-Finals
At this time, O’Sullivan hadn’t made it past a quarter-final and reach a one-table setup for six years. And his opponent was none other than Mark Selby, arguably the toughest opponent to play in the Crucible, especially when in form – and Selby was in form this championship. They contested one of the best semi-finals in years (click here to read my thoughts on that match) which many viewers considered the true final. But keeping it short, Selby held a lead for almost the entire match and was a hair away from the final at 16-14 up. However, O’Sullivan displayed a three-frame-blitz which we’ll probably never see again to win 17-16.
Side note: the final session of this semi-final had an average audience of 1.7 million viewers (peak 2.27m) on BBC Four alone.
Final
The stages of difficulty for O’Sullivan as he progressed through the harder half of the 2020 draw ramped up, much like a video game as you reach towards the end. While most expected the result that followed in the final, his opponent Kyren Wilson was one of the form players throughout the tournament, as he eliminated the defending champion. Although, Wilson succumbed to the pressure of reaching his first world final as O’Sullivan ran away with the first and third session to win his sixth world title 18-8.
The final wasn’t as easy as the score-line would indicate, particularly if you watched the second session where Wilson almost overturned an 8-2 deficit into a 9-8 lead. This was probably O’Sullivan’s worst session of the tournament which encouraged him to indulge in a little technical practice of the morning of the final day. A practice, which resulted in a much finer session as he won seven frames in a row, requiring only one frame in the evening session, which he claimed immediately for No. 6.
Conclusion
To be honest, I still don’t know what impresses me most about O’Sullivan’s journey to this title. The calibre of opponent he had to face to get there? The age at which he did all this? The fact that he won it all with his B game? Probably all of those things. For me, it was down to many people thinking he was done with the sport and should retire. This was the first ‘bad’ season he’s had for quite some time leading up to the WSC and many were stating he should put his cue to rest.
Obviously, it was a WSC played under different circumstances, but the frames still needed to be won and the balls needed to be potted. O’Sullivan showed his bottle and will numerous times throughout as there were a number of times where he was considered out of the tournament. But he continues to play the game on his own terms which makes him capable of winning any tournament, while the rest of the field try and push him out of the top of the rankings.
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