Feature: O'Sullivan fights to cure "disease" that has plagued his game

WUHAN, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Seven-time snooker world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan says he has a "disease."

It is not a medical diagnosis. It is how he describes a technical problem he has spent nearly four years trying to cure, one he says has robbed him of the power, direction and confidence that once made him the dominant player in world snooker.

"I call it a disease because it feels like the method that I took on has ruined me," the 50-year-old said after reaching the semifinals of the World Snooker Wuhan Open last week. "I've got no cue power, got no sense of direction. I don't know where the balls are going."

His latest withdrawal from the British Open, which begins Monday in Cheltenham, came for medical reasons. But just days earlier in Wuhan, O'Sullivan was still wrestling with the technical problem that has increasingly defined this stage of his career.

Last Thursday, in an all-English quarterfinal against four-time world champion Mark Selby at the Wuhan Open, O'Sullivan fell 2-0 behind before winning three frames in a row. Selby leveled at 3-3, but O'Sullivan finished the match with breaks of 80 and 129 to win 5-3.

Sky Sports called it "his most impressive performance of the season yet." O'Sullivan called it ugly.

"To be honest, I don't really have much hope to regain the kind of level that I was at before," he said at the news conference afterward. "But as it stands, it's pretty ugly out there for me, and maybe ugly for you guys to watch me play."

The next day, the difference between what O'Sullivan saw and what others saw became even more striking.

In the semifinal, he faced China's 24-year-old Chang Bingyu, whom he had coached about a decade ago.

This time, O'Sullivan seemed to lose his connection with the table. Several important shots caught the edge of the pocket and bounced away. At one point, a frustrated O'Sullivan swung his cue through the air, then sat down and shook his head. He eventually lost 6-3.

"Just embarrassing," he told Xinhua. The "disease" in his game, he added, had "come back big time."

According to O'Sullivan, the problem dates back six years. At 44, he could have relied on decades of experience and continued playing largely as he always had. But he didn't. Instead, he decided to learn a technique called "SightRight," a coaching method designed to help players align their eyes correctly with a shot.

"A lot of people kind of thought it was good," O'Sullivan said. "It kind of turned against me after three or four years of doing it. So I'm trying to unlearn that, which is really hard to do."

For most players, experience is supposed to provide something to fall back on when a shot goes wrong. But O'Sullivan said he has lost that safety net.

"As a player, you always have some anchors to hang onto," he said. "I used to have four or five where if one wasn't working, I'd try another one, and then that would just get me going. But at the moment, I just have nothing. I haven't for four years, so it's just been like a nightmare."

O'Sullivan has not won a ranking title since January 2024. His seventh world championship came in 2022. Before Wuhan, he had won only one match at each of the Shanghai Masters and China Open this season. He even described himself as a "very poor snooker player."

Yet there are contradictions in that diagnosis. A player who says he has no sense of direction remains No. 14 in the world, while a player who calls his own technique ugly can still beat some of the biggest names in the sport.

For Wuhan spectator Chen Can, the O'Sullivan he watched was very different from the player O'Sullivan described.

"He beat Carter 5-2, downed Yao Pengcheng 5-1, knocked out Maguire 5-2 and defeated Selby 5-3," Chen said. "I feel he still has it. His attacking game is still smooth, and he can adjust quickly when he is in trouble."

Some British fans commenting online offered a simpler diagnosis, saying O'Sullivan "can't cure it. It's called 'age'."

But O'Sullivan does not buy that explanation. At an age when many players have long since retired, he is still taking his game apart and trying to rebuild it.

"I've been trying to do it for a year. I thought I was there, but I wasn't, and now I'm kind of back to the drawing board," he said.

He has also sought advice from Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry, who told him they continued playing for perhaps a decade after entering similar slumps.

"I give myself 18 months, maybe, to get into the 2028 world championships, to see if I can get somewhere back to how I used to hit the ball," he said. "If I hit the ball half decent, then I can still win tournaments."

An eighth world title in 2028 would give O'Sullivan the outright record for modern-era world championships, moving him beyond Hendry's seven.

"I'll try my hardest," he said. "We'll have to wait and see." Enditem