Shaun Murphy claimed his first victory over Ronnie O’Sullivan since 2017, with a 4-0 whitewash, as he moved into the quarter-finals of the Riyadh Season Snooker Championship. <\/p>\n
It was the first occasion since 2023 that seven-time world champion O’Sullivan had failed to win a frame in any contest of seven frames or more.<\/p>\n
Murphy, who had also earlier defeated 15-year-old Ziyad Al-Qabbani 4-0, produced several stunning pots and registered breaks of 53 and 93 against O’Sullivan, who had very little time to find his rhythm.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what the statistics are, but it is a long time since I have tasted victory against Ronnie and they are special any time they come up even in short match like this,” Murphy told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
“It is such a prestigious event and you know everyone is trying 100% so despite it only being a best-of-seven I was pleased with how I played and delighted to get through.<\/p>\n
“I just tried to go out and play like I have all season and thankfully for me most of those long reds went in.”<\/p>\n
Murphy will now face current Crucible champion Zhao Xintong in the last eight on Thursday (20:00 GMT) in an event that has attracted huge publicity for offering a reward of $1m (\u00a3760,000) for potting the golden ball after making a maximum 147.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, John Higgins delivered a withering assessment of the table conditions in the Saudi Arabian capital despite compiling consecutive breaks of 106 to seal a 4-0 success over Ding Junhui.<\/p>\n
“There are so many\u2026like beer mats underneath the table and it’s raised up,” said the Scot. <\/p>\n
“Somebody really needs to get told. I don’t know who has passed that but it’s pathetic for a million-pound tournament. It really is bad.”<\/p>\n
Stephen Hendry, who was working as a studio pundit for TNT Sports, added: “It’s incredible how much it’s been built up.<\/p>\n
“I can only assume the floor is so uneven they have had to build the table up, but as a player you can really feel the difference.”<\/p>\n
Higgins, 50, will now meet last year’s winner Mark Allen on Thursday, aiming for a place in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shaun Murphy claimed his first victory over Ronnie O’Sullivan since 2017, with a 4-0 whitewash, as he moved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-149146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}