Ronnie O’Sullivan had to take the last four frames to see off China’s world number 104 Chang Bingyu and reach the quarter-finals of the Saudi Arabia Masters.<\/p>\n
The seven-time world champion looked to be heading home after trailing 5-2, but he hit back to win 6-5 and set up a last-eight meeting with Kyren Wilson.<\/p>\n
Chang, 23, only recently returned to the Tour having completed a two-year ban for his role in the match-fixing scandal which rocked the sport in 2022.<\/p>\n
But he looked on course for the biggest win of his career until O’Sullivan sprang into life with a six-minute break of 103 to move two behind.<\/p>\n
O’Sullivan took a scrappy ninth frame and when Chang broke down on 53 in the next the 49-year-old capitalised to take it to a decider, in which a virtuoso 125 clearance got him over the line.<\/p>\n
“I missed so many easy balls. It’s just not good enough to win tournaments,” O’Sullivan told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
“But I wasn’t battling out there, I was quite enjoying it. But I’ve got Kyren next. If I miss like that he’ll trounce me. “<\/p>\n
Wilson, the 2024 world champion, beat Si Jiahui 6-3.<\/p>\n
Mark Williams explained the logic behind playing “blind” shots after brushing aside Shaun Murphy 6-1.<\/p>\n
Williams pulled off several outstanding pots after closing his eyes before making contact with the cue ball.<\/p>\n
“Everything’s a blur and I do it to see how well I am cueing,” three-time world champions Williams said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got to do all my alignments stood up because when I am down there it’s a guess.<\/p>\n
“When I’m doing the shots shutting my eyes it just confirms to me that I’m in the right line really.<\/p>\n
“If it misses to the left or right I know which part of the ball I’ve hit.”<\/p>\n
Williams will play Elliot Slessor following his 6-5 victory over Stuart Bingham.<\/p>\n
Mark Selby became the fifth player to reach 900 career centuries despite a 6-4 defeat to Neil Robertson.<\/p>\n
Four-time world champion Selby joined an elite club including O’Sullivan, Trump, John Higgins and Robertson with 119 in the second frame.<\/p>\n
The Australian produced two centuries of his own – 111, and 137 in the last frame – to recover from a 4-3 deficit.<\/p>\n
Ali Carter rattled off five successive frames to overcome Oliver Lines 6-3 and will play Robertson next.<\/p>\n
Chris Wakelin sprung a late-night surprise when he knocked out current world champion Zhao Xintong 6-5, and he will face Barry Hawkins, who beat Ding Junhui in another deciding frame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronnie O’Sullivan had to take the last four frames to see off China’s world number 104 Chang Bingyu…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-66299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}