O'Sullivan comes back for Welsh Open glory

23:43:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

Ronnie O'Sullivan turned tables against Neil Robertson to win 9-5 and conquer his 4th Welsh Open title, but at the same time equalize Steve Davis' number of won ranking tournaments (aka. 28).

The Rocket has been flying this week in Cardiff and made the headlines of the newspapers all around the world starting with day one thanks to his determination in refusing to make a maximum break; he practically stated that the prize money (aka. £10,000) is just not tempting enough.

But putting that aside his performance throughout the entire tournament has been brilliant and the level of relaxation with which he played each match made us stay glued to our TV screens.

Making no less than 10 century breaks during the tournament (he actually saved the best for last and scored a perfectly cued 141 to win the final against Robbo), O'Sullivan proves to be what we all know he is: one hell of a player!

Interestingly enough though, the first session of the final cues battle didn't go as planned for Ronnie, his opponent flying at 2-0 up thanks to a top contribution of 78.

O'Sullivan used a 60 break to win his first frame of the match, but the interval was promoting Robertson as being in full control at 3-1 up after Ronnie missed a red to the right middle pocket, this allowing his opponent to score a great 76 break.

When returning in the arena, "The Rocket" fired another 60 break to pull back a frame, but the Australian was in for the kill: runs of 44 and 77 were taking him at 5-2 up!

Luckily Ronnie managed to "return" the favour and answered with a 44 to finish the first session trailing by 5-3.  

However, the story changed completely when the second and last session started, for a totally different O'Sullivan entered the arena.

Taking advantage of Neil's missing a pink at the beginning of frame 10 and then a blue, O'Sullivan used a top break of 57 to start his comeback, to which he carefully added runs of 46 and 32 to draw level at 5-5.

Next in line was a break of 67 that was putting him in the leading position for the first time since the start of the match and from this point on he was practically unstoppable. 

Breaks of 70, 61 and 141 were closing the door for a perfect 9-5 victory, which also means that Ronnie managed to win no less than seven frames on a row!

This victory means that he's equalized John Higgins on his four Welsh Open titles, but also Steve Davis record of winning 28 ranking events. Not too shabby, don't you think?


From Wales' Cardiff we fly straight to Stock, Essex for the Championship League's event, that’s starting tomorrow 22nd of February.


0 comments: