I’m in love with snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan – purely in the sporting sense, of course. I want him to win more than he does himself. He’s in yet another World Championship semi-final, this time at the ludicrous age of 49, but claims not to care whether he triumphs or not. I’ll be sobbing into my beer if he doesn’t.
It’s his genius, unpredictability, hilarity and longevity that fascinate
Why my obsession? After all, he’s everything I’m not. And I don’t mean just his talent, of which he’s got bucketloads. When he comments on politics, I always disagree. He hints he voted Remain (I didn’t) and campaigns for socialists (I don’t). He jogs for miles every day; I last ran about three decades ago. He’s teetotal these days; I need a glass or two just to watch him play. He’s written three crime novels; I‘ve written a technical guide to media training.
At the table, his manner can be off-putting, absurd, intimidating and filthy. According to his rival Ali Carter, he was ‘snotting all over the floor’ during the Masters final of 2024 when Carter was down on a shot. When the referee reprimanded him for making an obscene gesture during the 2022 World Championship final, O’Sullivan snarled back, ‘you saw nothing’, followed by a finger-pointing ‘don’t start!’
He openly discusses his mood swings and mental-health problems, which famously led to him walking out on a 2006 match against a gobsmacked Stephen Hendry with a possible 12 frames still to play. During 2012-13, he gave up on snooker for a whole season, but then rocked up at the Crucible to win his fifth world title with outrageous ease. Afterwards, commenting on his demons, he told a global TV audience that he was ‘up and down like a whore’s drawers’, making BBC presenter Hazel Irvine splutter with horror and delight.
It’s the genius, unpredictability, hilarity and longevity that fascinate. Given that he turned professional a staggering 33 years ago, and is still playing at the highest level, it’s understandable he finds it all tedious. So, he takes it out on the media, mercilessly teasing, moaning and threatening to retire. He toyed with the interviewer Rob Walker a couple of years back, responding to every question with exactly the same answer about ‘cue action’. Walker didn’t stand a chance.
In a 2019 tournament in Preston, he went through the week pretending to be Australian, putting on the accent and refusing to snap out of it. When asked what he liked about Australia, he replied: ‘I’ve never been there, so I couldn’t really tell you.’ When playing in Saudi Arabia, he sometimes conducts press conferences in a thobe.
We all know he can play like a god. That’s how he’s won seven world titles and holds just about every other record in the book. But he’s capable of excruciating errors. ‘Oooh, I didn’t see that coming!’, gasps the commentator all too frequently. Right, but his fans did. There really are Two Ronnies.
And if anything can go wrong, it happens to him. A couple of years ago, the tip kept coming off the end of his cue. He’s the only player I’ve seen with a waistcoat pocket so poorly designed that his cube of chalk, which all players carry, keeps falling onto the table. He’s been known to involuntarily break wind during a match, then sheepishly apologise, and at other times looks like he’s fallen asleep. And he’s got a temper. He was so disgusted at himself back in January that he snapped his cue in half and didn’t play competitively for three months.
You might expect someone like that to lack sportsmanship. But Ronnie has tremendous respect for the game, often refusing to ask his opponent to play a shot again after a ‘miss call’ from the referee, so long as he feels they made a genuine first attempt. I know no other player prepared to sacrifice himself like that for what he sees as the wider good.
His two predecessors as the world’s best – Davis in the 80s and Hendry in the 90s – were so robotically excellent and unbeatable that it became boring. But O’Sullivan is all too human, complicated and flawed. ‘I’m unhelpable’, he told us last night after his quarter-final victory, only partly in jest. That’s why his supporters adore him and feel physically pained when he misses.
Feel for us, then, this weekend. The Ronster is down to the last four and could yet win a record-breaking eighth world title. For his fans, this is when it becomes terrifying. The closer he gets, the more panicky we become. Hours go by, and we just stare rigidly at the screen, praying for his victory, living every moment. Is it the hope that kills us? Probably. But it’s also the infuriating fact that O’Sullivan himself doesn’t seem that bothered.
Comments