Ronnie beat Barry Hawkins by 4-1 in the last 16 round of the 2020 World Grand Prix.

Here are the scores:

And the report by WST:

Trump And O’Sullivan Into Quarters

Ronnie O’Sullivan survived a mid-match wobble to beat Barry Hawkins 4-1 in the last 16 of the matchroom World Grand Prix, while Judd Trump came from 3-1 down to score a 4-3 win over Stuart Bingham.

O’Sullivan is still chasing his first title since becoming World Champion in August, having lost two finals this season. He’ll face Kyren Wilson in the quarter-finals on Thursday evening – a repeat of the Crucible final which O’Sullivan won 18-8.

A break of 108 gave O’Sullivan the opening frame tonight and he added the second for 2-0. An incident-packed third frame included a prolonged discussion between O’Sullivan and referee Ben Williams on the ‘three-miss’ rule. Hawkins later had a chance to snatch the frame on the colours but ran out of position on the final black, leading by seven points. O’Sullivan potted the black and went on to win the respotted black, slotting it into a centre pocket for 3-0.

In the fourth, O’Sullivan looked to be cruising past the winning line until he missed a straight-forward brown when leading 57-40. Hawkins pinched that frame and had chances in the fifth as his opponent seemed to lose focus. But 37-time ranking event winner O’Sullivan eventually regrouped and made an excellent 51 clearance.

“I don’t know what happened on the brown (in frame four),” admitted O’Sullivan. “I struggled to string pots together tonight. My bad game was just a bit better than Barry’s.”

…

The “prolonged discussion” showed actually two things: good sportsmanship by Ronnie as Ben Williams had failed to issue the warning AND the fact that even top players are confused about that rule, not knowing if being able to hit a ball on full ball is what is required or if they need to be able to hit both sides of a ball on.

Watch it here, and listen to Ken Doferty’s commentary

The whole match was played in great spirit.

I thought that Ronnie played very well for the first three frames.

The brown that Ronnie missed in the fourth frame came as a total surprise and I can only see one explanation: a big lapse of concentration as he really looked as he had the match won at that point. It clearly rattled Ronnie. I was very pleased to see him finish the match  with that 51 in the next frame. It wasn’t an easy break, and after the missed brown in the previous frame, and the miscue whilst playing the green in the frame in progress, it wasn’t a certainty by any means. BTW I hope that the miscue will not trigger another “tip-gate” …

Ronnie is not exactly the self-forgiving type of guy, and his post-match quotes are just testimony of that.

Next up for Ronnie is Kyren Wilson tonight over best of  9. I expect Kyren to be out for revenge.  Not an easy match for either.