Ronnie O’Sullivan has once again suffered a defeat to Michael Holt, making this his third loss this season to Holt
Once again Ronnie O’Sullivan failed to produce the magic we have come to expect from him on the snooker table. Often fans expect to see big breaks and amazing shots from the genius but as we are coming to realise, this cannot always be the case. He has admitted himself that he is no longer the snooker player he once was.
Playing Michael Holt this season has been nothing short of a nightmare for O’Sullivan. He lost to Holt at the Grand Prix and more recently, the Shanghai Masters which clearly has given Holt the psychological edge over O’Sullivan.
The match today between these two lacked much quality to be fair. A good proportion of the frames went scrappy at times. It was very clear that O’Sullivan’s A game was not there. He lost position on several occasions forcing breaks to end and not creating enough frame winning opportunities.
O’Sullivan was on the back foot from the very beginning as Holt rushed into a 3-1 lead going into the interval. At one stage O’Sullivan got the score back to 5-4 but Holt then went on to close out the match by taking the next frame and win the match 6-4.
This is another disappointing loss for O’Sullivan but he has promised to continue playing until he longer enjoys it. The big test would surely be the UK at the end of November.
Judd Trump was also in action this afternoon against a player we haven’t seen much of lately. James Wattana has failed to reach latter stages of tournaments in recent years so it has been great to see him back in form this week. This match was of incredible high standard. Although Wattana played very good snooker against Trump today, it was not good enough to cope with the onslaught of big breaks from Judd. Breaks of 83, 137, 133 and 77 was a brilliant display of talent from the Bristol lad.
Arguable two of the best break builders in the game, Ding Junhui and Ricky Walden were also playing today. This match was one that was very easy on the eye with some big breaks. A
lthough Ding got himself up to a 5-2 lead, the Englishman came back at him to bring the score back to 5-5 with impressive breaks of 130, 69 and 124. It was the Chinese man’s day though as he closed out Walden to win 6-5.
Joe Perry beat his fellow practice partner and good friend Neil Robertson today by 6-2. The Aussie has been struggling trying to find form recently and today’s match reflected that. There were a few frame winning contributions from both players, but neither player set the house on fire. It was Perry who was ultimately the better of the two and he now goes on to play in the last 8.
