Ronnie O’Sullivan admitted cueing problems left him scared of playing snooker after he advanced to his 150th ranking quarter-final at the World Open in China.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Sullivan has spent time away from competition to rebuild his game and technique, and the hard work paid off with an impressive 5-3 victory over Shaun Murphy in Yushan.<\/p>\n
“If I can get my cue through the ball I will be alright,” O\u2019Sullivan was quoted as saying on the World Snooker Tour website.<\/p>\n
“It doesn\u2019t matter whether I win or lose. I am able to do that now.<\/p>\n
“It has been torturous to be honest with you. It has been really hard work.<\/p>\n
“For me, just going out there and playing is a victory. Whether I win or lose is irrelevant. For me to be able to go out there and not feel scared is a victory.<\/p>\n
“I am happy to go out there and feel that if I get a chance I might do something.<\/p>\n
“Before I was thinking, ‘please don\u2019t miss, don\u2019t let me on the table\u2019. This is what was going through my head.”<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old has chosen to adopt a limited calendar for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Sullivan will meet Welshman Ryan Day in his first quarter-final appearance since making the final of the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters last August.<\/p>\n
“Shaun has been playing unbelievably. He has been so strong,” said the seven-time world champion, who made frame-winning breaks of 70, 76, 89, 96 and 121, having trailed 2-1.<\/p>\n
“I was happy when I got to 2-2. I thought at least I\u2019ve been involved in a game against a top-quality player. To win is even better.”<\/p>\n
Mark Allen was in superb form as he reached the quarter-finals by dismantling Zhou Yuelong 5-0 and will meet Wu Yize in the last eight after his 5-2 win over Kyren Wilson.<\/p>\n
The Antrim man began with a break of 129 and followed it up with two half-centuries.<\/p>\n
He sealed the match by edging two scrappy frames, much to the disappointment of the home crowd.<\/p>\n
World number one Judd Trump put together closing runs of 106, 77 and 94 to beat Robbie Williams 5-2 and will next play Hossein Vafaei, who prevailed 5-4 against Zhang Anda on the final black.<\/p>\n
Gary Wilson made century breaks of 100, 104 and 107 to overcome world champion Zhao Xintong 5-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronnie O’Sullivan admitted cueing problems left him scared of playing snooker after he advanced to his 150th ranking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-355203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355203","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=355203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}