RONNIE O’SULLIVAN finds motivation difficult to sustain throughout an entire season but has no such problems at the Rileys Club Masters. Fuelled by a determination to win the event for only the second time, he battled frustration and a dogged opponent to reach the quarter-finals at Wembley Conference Centre yesterday.
Two weeks ago, an uninterested O’Sullivan lost 5-0 to Graeme Dott in the Malta Cup, but in this rematch the world champion was fully tuned in to the task and, benefiting from the wisdom of his coach, Ray Reardon, overcame a mid-game wobble to beat Dott 6-3. O’Sullivan advances to play Ding Junhui, of China, on Friday.
Breaks of 64 and 130 in the first two frames suggested that O’Sullivan would coast through, but when Dott stole the sixth on the pink with a typically stubborn 41 clearance it was 3-3.
O’Sullivan was under pressure but responded well with cleverly compiled breaks of 72, 85 and an outstanding 51 clearance finally to repel Dott’s challenge. While O’Sullivan respects Dott sufficiently to describe the match as a potential banana skin, he was at pains to dismiss the significance of his whitewash in the Mediterranean. “That wasn’t me out there,” O’Sullivan said. “I think I’d have lost 5-0 to Stevie Wonder given my frame of mind.”
There is no doubt that O’Sullivan badly wants to be at Wembley for as long as possible. He has re-engaged the services of Reardon, the septuagenarian six-times world champion, who greatly helped his push to the world title at the Crucible last year, and gives the impression that something special will be required to prevent him from claiming a trophy on which his name has not been engraved for ten years.
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Next on O’Sullivan’s agenda is an unknown quantity. “I’ve not seen Ding play much so I’m prepared for anything,” O’Sullivan said. “When you’re world No 1, you get used to people trying to shoot you down. It comes with the territory.” The theory that experience is paramount on snooker’s big occasions was hung, drawn and quartered by Ding on the way to a 6-1 victory over Ken Doherty that enabled him to replace O ‘Sullivan as the youngest quarter-finalist in the 30-year history of the Masters.
Ding is 17; O’Sullivan was 19 years and two months old when he lifted the trophy in 1995. Doherty has been suffering from an ear infection since Saturday — it came on, he claims, while he was attending a performance of The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre — but refused to blame it. “Even if I’d been 100 per cent, the lad would’ve been a handful,” Doherty said. “Ding’s going to be a prolific winner in the next few years.”
Ding set out his stall with a 141 total clearance in the first frame. A 147 was on the horizon when he potted ten reds with blacks to open the third frame. However, in potting the eleventh red, Ding had a thunderous kick that caused the cue-ball to throw wider than the normal angle. It collided with another red, stopped in no man’s land and all hope of the first Wembley 147 since Kirk Stevens constructed one against Jimmy White in the 1984 semi-finals was extinguished.
“This is my largest prize,” Ding, who is now sure to collect at least £15,000, said. His English is poor but he did get across the financial implications of his success. It is, in fact, a king’s ransom for a teenager from a humble background from Shanghai.
John Higgins, the 1999 Masters champion, also sailed through by beating Chris Small, a fellow Scot who is still waiting for his first win this season, 6-1. Higgins, who now plays Stephen Lee or Stephen Hendry, registered breaks of 106, 60, and 65.