Ronnie O’Sullivan has again stressed that he may only have two more chances to win a record-breaking eighth world championship and vowed to quit if he has to enter qualifying.<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old, who won the last of his seven titles in 2022, is level with Stephen Hendry as the most successful player in the World Championship\u2019s modern era.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019d love to win another World Championship,” O\u2019Sullivan told World Snooker Tour after opening his 2026-27 season with a 6-1 win over Liu Linhao at the Shanghai Masters. “I have two attempts at it.<\/p>\n
“If I can find a bit of cueing or some form at Sheffield, you never know. If I don\u2019t do it this year or the next, it will definitely never happen.”<\/p>\n
O\u2019Sullivan has slipped to 12th in the world rankings as a result of playing fewer tournaments and only the top 16 qualify for some of the biggest events.<\/p>\n
That raises the prospect of the game\u2019s biggest name potentially having to go through qualifying to reach the Crucible \u2013 but O\u2019Sullivan says that will not be happening.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m not going to play qualifiers. You won\u2019t be seeing me go down to Barnsley trying to win qualifying matches and all that sort of stuff,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If that happens, then obviously that\u2019s the end of my career. But hopefully, I can keep going for at least another two seasons.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m happy with my career and how things have gone. I want to enjoy these next two years. I\u2019ll reassess in 2028 and if things are really going well, you can maybe extend it.”<\/p>\n
O\u2019Sullivan believes he has to achieve the feat in the next two years because of the mental demands of the game.<\/p>\n
He added: “I have to be realistic. I\u2019m 50 now and if I play for two hours I then have to lie down for two or three hours. It is very hard for me.<\/p>\n
“OK, you don\u2019t have to run around a football pitch but mentally you have to concentrate. When you are younger you can do that for hour upon hour.”<\/p>\n
O\u2019Sullivan proved too strong for 18-year-old Chinese wild card Liu, finishing off the match with breaks of 73, 71, 75 and 55 after initially being pegged back to 1-1 following a fine run of 88 from his opponent.<\/p>\n
Zhou Yuelong came from behind to beat four-time world champion Mark Selby 6-5, Barry Hawkins overcame Lei Peifan 6-4 and Ding Junhui saw off Dongcheng Yao 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronnie O’Sullivan has again stressed that he may only have two more chances to win a record-breaking eighth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-571132","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\/571132","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=571132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}