18.4.09

O'SULLIVAN STILL NO.1

Ronnie O'Sullivan is guaranteed to be world no.1 again next season after beating Stuart Bingham 10-5 in the first round of the Betfred.com World Championship.

This was not O'Sullivan at his imperious best but the defending champion still made three centuries and finished off with 365 points without reply.

It means his closest challenger in the rankings, Stephen Maguire, cannot catch him even if the Scot wins the title.

O'Sullivan will need to improve his long potting and safety but you can always improve as long as you are in the tournament.

Bingham will reflect on what was a rotten draw to get. He played well in patches and probably would have beaten some of the other players in the event, but was up against the heaviest scorer in the game.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

O'sullivans middle to long distance potting has been terrible for quite a while now, he's great when he's in the ball's, but if this does'nt improve he won't win here, this coming from a big Ronnie fan.

Claus Christensen said...

95% potting success after 15 frames. That's pretty good.

Anonymous said...

If Ronnie can win matches and tournaments playing like that, then the other players have only got themselves to blame. They all seem to go to pieces when playing him, he needs consistently strong opposition to really test him. The rest of the guys need to find some balls - or rather the pockets!

Anonymous said...

Fu doesnt go to pieces. thats one for a start that makes your statement/opinion not correct.

Claus Christensen said...

Not every frame is a 5 minute maximum. Ronnie made some excellent breaks and had a handful of misses like you'd expect in a long match. He had 2-3 slightly bad frames but let's not get silly and call it a bad performance.

Anonymous said...

i have never seen a five minute maximum

Anonymous said...

many might go to pieces but the likes of maguire, murphy, higgins, fu, carter and ebdon (remember him?) wouldnt be so easily fazed

Anonymous said...

"Fu doesnt go to pieces. thats one for a start that makes your statement/opinion not correct."


I remembered reading somewhere - either on this excellent blog or elsewhere - that for some reason, ronnie doesnt enjoy playing against Fu for the very reason that Fu hardly displays any emotions at the table.

Fu has a 8-7 record against Ronnie which is surely one of the best around. Just food for thought.

Claus Christensen said...

5 minutes 20 seconds then. Sorry your majesty. Jeez.......

jamie brannon said...

strong start in the balls but the long potting wasnt much good last year and he still won it, think he will beat allen about 13 to 7