Ronnie beat Ross Muir by 4-3 in the second round of the 2023 Welsh Open in Landudno but is was quite the adventure! Ronnie started with a century but right at the end of frame 1, his tip came off. Ronnie of course got a 15 minutes break to fix the issue. He came back, with his tip reattached, but only a few minutes into frame 2, the tip came off again. There was another 15 minutes break and play resumed but you could see that Ronnie wasn’t confident in his shots anymore. He lost the next two frames. He recovered however and went 3-2 up. In frame 6 however, there was more chaos. Ross has trapped Ronnie in a tough snooker. Ronnie failed to hit a red on his first two attempts, trying to just graze the pack on his return to baulk. He didn’t come very close either time. Before the third attempt, the referee Luise Kraatz, warned him, indicating that he could see a red full ball at the edge of the pack. Ronnie didn’t feel confident to play the same shot again and whacked into the pack … hitting the pink first and losing the frame on the “three miss rule”. Ronnie said afterwards that he could not see another shot and went for the fluke. That was probably true but surely there was a lot of frustration being released in that shot as well. Anyway … Much to his credit, Ronnie regrouped, played a good decider and eventually won the match! He will play Rod Lawler tonight … no doubt his patience will be tested again. Rod is a very good player, very reliable but … very, very slow!

Here are the scores:

This is the report by WST:

Ronnie O’Sullivan narrowly avoided another upset as he beat amateur Ross Muir 4-3 in an incident-packed contest. World Champion O’Sullivan opened with a run of 108 but his cue tip came off at the end of that break, and again during the next frame, each time requiring a 15-minute interval for the tip to be repaired. Scotland’s Muir then went 2-1 ahead, before runs of 58 and 78 restored O’Sullivan’s lead at 3-2. At the end of frame 3, Ronnie had come back at the table: he didn’t try to get snooker but wanted some table time and to get a feeling of the tip. That showed that he does care and is trying his best.

Early in frame six, O’Sullivan twice missed the reds when playing safe, and was warned by referee Luise Kraatz that another foul would lose him the frame, under the three misses rule. He slashed wildly at the pack, hit the pink first and sent the cue ball off the table, leaving the score at 3-3. But the world number one then dominated the decider with breaks of 23 and 42 to earn a meeting with Rod Lawler.

O’Sullivan said: “I don’t know why the tip fell off, but after the second time it was always in the back of my mind on every shot, that it could come off again. What excites me now is winning the battle. Every player goes through the emotions, ups and down. It’s how you deal with them. If you want to win tournaments and have a successful career you have to learn how to be resilient, battle hardened and know how to stay in the match sometimes.”

Asked about the incident in the sixth frame, he added: “I didn’t see another shot. I was snookered on virtually every ball. I could have tried to come off two cushions but if I had missed the reds it was end of frame. Or I could try to get a fluke, so I tried that but hit the pink.”

Here are some images shared on social media including by Ronnie himself

When in Llandudno, Ronnie loves to go running up the nearby mountain. The sceneries are beautiful and the weather more often than not is sunny, but cold. Ronnie shared some images of his yesterday run as well.

A few videos were shared on Eurosport YouTube channel