Ronnie O'Sullivan makes snooker top-16 prediction after admitting 'steady decline'

05/09/2024 16:20

Ronnie O’Sullivan predicts he will be outside snooker’s top-16 ranking ‘within two or three years’.

The 48-year-old camefrom 3-0 down to beat Zhang Anda 6-5 to reach the quarter-final of the Saudi Arabia Masters on Wednesday evening.

O’Sullivan, currently ranked fourth in the world, will play China’s Si Jiahui in the last eight of the tournament in Riyadh.

But the seven-time world champion admits he remains ‘unhappy ‘frustrated’ with his game.

‘I played better than I have been playing but still so many mistakes, so many unforced errors and just not good enough, really, but I have to accept that's what it is,’ O’Sullivan told Eurosport.

‘I've been on a steady decline probably for five years, it's just getting a little bit worse and worse, but you just try and hang on for as long as you can, it happens to everybody. It’s something you can’t probably correct, you’ve just got to accept it.

‘That's the frustrating thing. Normally, I feel like I put enough pressure on my opponents to force them to make mistakes.

‘I've spent most of my career just feeling pretty much in control. I didn't realise how much I was in control of matches until I've experienced not being in control of matches.

‘It’s hard because I’m used to feeling a certain way in most games but I haven’t been for quite a while, I suppose I just have to accept it, it is what it is, that’s why I started playing left-handed because I was getting so frustrated.

‘I just want to try and enjoy it. I ain't got long left. I'll be lucky if I'm in the top 16 within the next two or three years, the way I'm playing, seriously.

‘You look at John Higgins, it’s just one of them, you can’t stop it, you’d like to but it happens to everyone… [Steve] Davis, Jimmy [White], [Stephen] Hendry, it happened to John, it happens to everyone, every sportsman.

‘You have an up and then you stay there for a while and then you have a gradual down. I just have to accept it, it’s not easy but if I want to keep playing the game I’m going to have to otherwise I’m just going to get frustrated with myself.’

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