Ronnie beat young Yan Bingtao bt 4-2 in Preston yesterday evening in a very entertaining match.  It was nice to see the Chinese teenager interacting with crowd and going for his game. Ronnie clearly enjoyed it.

Here is the report on Worldsnooker (excerpt):

Wednesday 8 Feb 2017 12:54AM

Ronnie O’Sullivan had to dig deep to see off China’s talented 16-year-old Yan Bingtao 4-2 in a pulsating opening round tie at the Ladbrokes World Grand Prix in Preston.

O’Sullivan, who won a record seventh Masters title in January, thrilled the Guild Hall crowd with a magnificent 137 break to take the opener, before winning the second to move two in front.

However, the Chinese star showed tremendous fight, reeling off  two quick fire frames in just 21 minutes to go 2-2. Yan, who was part of China’s 2015 World Cup winning side, made breaks of 69, 68 and 55 to restore parity.

The Rocket then regrouped from the onslaught and showed his class, winning the following two frames by compiling runs of 59 and 128 to close out what was an enthralling clash.

After the match Ronnie took on twitter to praise his young opponent:

Here are some of his tweets (when Ronnie was answering to a fan’s tweet, I have removed the fan’s twitter link from these quotes for obvious reasons)

he will be the best in the world .. and win at least 6 world titles the guy is awesome

yeah only John Higgins was as good as him at 16 he will be a force

he scared me

that’s how he plays all the time.. it’s scary how good he is.. but even more scary how good he will be

pressure from the media will never stop you making it if you can handle pressure

I know I’m right. But there are 3 Chinese players who have that same potential.. and I’m coaching all 3 🙂

you need both to be the best

In the last quote “both” stands for “the game and the ability to handle the pressure”

Here are the videos you’ll want to watch:

The match:

The post-match analysis by Neal Foulds and Alan MacManus – hosted by Jill Douglas

This one: it contains an interview by Neal Foulds with some robot pretending to be Ronnie:

So Ronnie is true to his word about not doing interviews anymore