Ronnie O’Sullivan: In Defence of an Overlooked Sporting Titan
The best aspect of a pub is the pool table. I’ve always loved the way it draws people in from all four corners of the room, whether keenly watching a stranger’s game or hovering to claim a cue. I’ve never had the skill to play, though. The cues are awkward in my hands, and I’ve never understood how to balance force, angle, momentum, or resistance. So, watching someone with expertise and ingenuity — taking mere seconds to line up and execute a perfect shot I could never achieve — has always awed me. That’s partly why I find myself watching the even more complex snooker whenever it’s on. Particularly, watching Ronnie O’Sullivan.
A precocious O’Sullivan took up snooker at seven years old during its heyday, entering his first competitions only a few years later and becoming the youngest tournament competitor to pot all balls with no misses, recording a maximum break. His early talent was nurtured by his father, who bought a pool table for their Essex home and encouraged his son to play. As of today, the Rocket — so named for his dynamic playing style — is an eight-time UK Champion, seven-time World Champion, and eight-time Masters winner. In the 2023/4 season alone, he’s been victorious in four prestigious tournaments and overall has won forty-one ranking titles.
However. Google ‘most successful British sports people’, and O’Sullivan doesn’t even make the top twenty-six suggestions. While the list (which is noticeably masculine) credits many incredible athletes, the fact there is no room for a man regarded by many in his sport as the best who ever played is astonishing.
Why is this? The limited movement involved means competitors are by no means comparable to Olympians such as Mo Farah or Laura Kenny. However, the argument against physical exertion quickly runs out of steam. Snooker players will readily admit the wear and tear their bodies have faced, requiring muscle control and extreme focus. And it’s likely just as hard to get a ticket to a snooker final (the Sheffield Crucible’s capacity is a mere 980) as a football one.
Labelling O’Sullivan and his peers the players of a ‘game’, rather than a sport, also diminishes the sacrifices made in their personal lives to advance their professional ones. O’Sullivan’s path to a professional career was not a smooth one, by any means. By the time he was 19, his parents were both in prison — his father for killing a man in a bar brawl and his mother for tax evasion — leaving him sole guardian of his eight-year-old sister while only beginning to touch his later career heights. Shortly after, in 1996, he was suspended for headbutting an official, in the midst of what he has later said were the seven darkest years of his life.
Fluctuating success led the British press to at one point dub him ‘The Two Ronnie’s’; a particularly cruel nickname given his struggles with alcohol and substance abuse which led to several stints in rehabs and support groups. A positive test for cannabis lost him the 1998 Irish Masters title, before entering The Priory for drugs and alcohol addiction in 2000. Despite this, he won his first world championship in 2001 after calling Samaritans pre-tournament. O’Sullivan has also been transparent about his struggles with depression, his self-criticism leading to mood swings and plummeting mental health. These events can, and do, finish the careers of promising athletes to this day, and O’Sullivan still battles with anxiety.
He had only won two titles by the age of 30 and struggled to win any ranking games in the early 2010s, falling out of the global top ten, before a journey of rediscovery led him to be crowned world champion two years running. After taking a break in mid-2012 after global glory, he worked with sports psychiatrists on resilience and stability and, having played just one ranking game in 2013, turned up at the World Championships and defended his title.
But what makes O’Sullivan so watchable? A key aspect is the magnetic way in which he plays. His ambidexterity means he can switch hands at will, and without the aid of a rest or spider, pot the trickiest of shots. He dislikes long games, favouring quick play and building breaks (scoring highly in one turn at the table). During the 2024 Masters final, I watched as he moved light-footed around the table, always calculating the colours to use to his advantage, always conscious of every danger and advantage. His every decision was visible on his face, and his rare errors or poor luck sometimes drew a wry smile. Yes, his relationship with the sport he’s dedicated his life to is tumultuous, as seen in the number of times he’s attempted to retire before relenting and returning to even more success. Occasions like these, however, surely make his commitment worth it. Ronnie wants to win.
The respect he has from his peers is significant, too. Stephen Hendry, himself a seven-time world champion, called O’Sullivan’s fastest-ever 147 maximum (fifteen reds with fifteen blacks) in 1997 one of the most outstanding feats across all sports.
He’s not your typical sportsman. Succinct and to the point in interviews, he can be brutally honest or deviate bizarrely off-theme. The era of media training and PR has made little impact on him. He attributed his success at January’s World Grand Prix to buying an air-fryer and smoothie maker halfway through the competition, and his post-Masters interview lacked artifice and people-pleasing sound bites. He candidly admitted his opponent had given him an easier game than he had expected, thanked the Crucible crowd, lifted the trophy and left. It’s this quality that, paradoxically, draws fans to support him time and time again. O’Sullivan shows his humanity while reaching superhuman heights. He is fallible, as well as unbeatable. While he has at times complained about snooker’s faults — whether tournament management or its isolating nature — O’Sullivan really does love it. It has defined him for more than forty years, his sheer talent the outstanding bar for future generations to try to get close to.
O’Sullivan still lives near to where he grew up in Essex. He hates the fame his sport has brought him and keeps as much as he can about himself under wraps. In another life, he’s said he’d have liked to have been a Formula One driver. He runs frequently, which he took up to combat his addiction, and his 10-kilometre personal best was one of the fastest in 2008.
Who knows how much longer O’Sullivan will remain at the top of the sport — or even in it. But his contribution to snooker has been immense and unforgettable, and he deserves due credit for it.
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