After Ronnie O’Sullivan won last year’s World Snooker Championship, battering all five opponents en route to a record-equalling seventh title, the great Clive Everton likened his dominance of the sport to Tiger Woods or Roger Federer.
It is a comparison O’Sullivan has made himself, admitting that legends of golf and tennis set a benchmark against which he judges his own success. The parallels are certainly intriguing, albeit O’Sullivan’s career has played out in a less globally competitive arena in which the greatest threat has come in the shape of middle-aged men from Scotland.
There are some similarities: all three share an otherwordly ability to control their ball. And there are plenty of stats to compare – youngest major victory (O’Sullivan), most weeks ranked No 1 (Woods), percentage ranking titles won (Federer). But among the numbers, there is a glaring difference. O’Sullivan has earnt less than 10 per cent of the prize money of Woods or Federer, and that is before you get into the endorsements which move that 10 nearer one. Snooker is comparatively miniscule; no golfer or tennis player will ever be described as their sport’s Ronnie O’Sullivan.
O’Sullivan is not happy about this fact and, ahead of the 2023 World Championship in which he will chase an eighth title unprecedented in the modern era, he made his feelings clear.
“Snooker is in a bad place,” he said recently. “When you look at £10m prize money for 25 events across the year for 128 players, it’s never going to be good. It is probably as bad as it has ever been, also, because of the betting scandal.”
The hugely embarrassing Chinese betting scandal has seen 10 players, including two of the sport’s brightest young stars in Yan Bingtao and Zhao Xintong, charged with allegations of match-fixing and collusion. Their hearing will begin in 10 days while the Worlds is in full swing, and the situation has only compounded the impact of Covid, which saw events in China dropped from the calendar, all of which has burst optimism about rapid growth in the Chinese market.
And what O’Sullivan said next touched a nerve. “You look at the people actually managing the game, they are not the brightest sparks, so you can’t see them digging themselves out of it. It’s a bit like a pub sport now.”
Steve Dawson, chair of the World Snooker Tour, clapped back, accusing O’Sullivan of failing to be “a true ambassador” for the game. “Ronnie often compares snooker to golf and tennis, but I would challenge him as to whether for his part he elevates the sport and acts as a role model like a Rory McIlroy or Roger Federer,” he said.
Dawson’s long repost was full of salient points about his ongoing efforts to grow the sport in a challenging market, but his criticism of snooker’s only star seemed misguided at a time of such peril. Asking O’Sullivan to transform into an “ambassador” misses the point of why he is so compelling.
Federer is a beautiful player and a beautiful man; Woods is a beautiful player who pretended to be a beautiful man. O’Sullivan isn’t either and has never tried to be: he once gave Woods some advice – wisdom from one sporting genius to another – to take on the Masters like he had a 10in cock. While Woods and Federer were serene and poised, O’Sullivan is explosive and sometimes chaotic – and, crucially, he is utterly unpredictable.
There is a magnetism in the way he controls a cue ball, magic in the way he sees unimaginable angles and bends shots impossibly to his will. And there is also destruction in the way he picks off every ball on the table in five minutes and eight seconds. When you go to watch O’Sullivan you can’t be sure whether he will hit 147 or 146 to make a statement; whether he’ll win to embellish his legacy or announce his immediate retirement because he’s bored.
He is the cliched complicated genius, tormented by his own mind. While his dad served 18 years in prison for murder, the snooker table became a place of solace and escape, of focus and structure, of frustration and fury too. “I have carried this sport pretty much for the last 20-30 years,” he said last month, and it is still true, though for how much longer is unclear. He is already snooker’s oldest world champion. A flagging game should celebrate its brightest light while it still can, rather than try to cultivate his flair for corporate promotion.
O’Sullivan is favourite to lift the World Championship trophy on 1 May and cement his legacy as the greatest player ever to play the game. It is apt that his crowning moment could fall in the week of the King’s coronation. Like an ailing nation in need of a lift, snooker needs this historic success, now more than ever.
