This has just been posted by WST on twitter
Ronnie O’Sullivan has withdrawn from the WST Classic in Leicester for medical reasons.
He was due to meet David Grace at 6pm on Sunday evening in the second round, but Grace now receives a bye into the last 32.
This means that Ronnie will definitively not play in the Tour Championship.
And now Ronnie posted this
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
And injections definitely can help very good over a period of 3 or 4 weeks.
I still don’t agree that it’s a terrible season for Ronnie. His mindset is better than most of his career. And now it’s even better he didn’t get in the PC and TC so that he doesn’t put himself under too much pressure to play and wears out without noticing it.
All that is true Christian and his Instagram is full of Laila pictures too… definitely prefer seeing him happy even without wins than miserable despite winning
I was going to comment on this, too. Ronnie and Laila really seem to be very happy together these days, with each other and their dogs. It’s nice to see, and I hope they live together happily ever after…
Well, of course we are all happy about Ronnie’s happiness as a private person. I would just find it very unfortunate if injury cut his career shorter than he wants and he could not retire on his own terms.
There was one more tweet but Ronnie deleted it.
It was about that he has an elbow injury that he needs an injection for it, but it was postponed because he wanted to play in Thailand and this WST Classic.
But “today it became clear that I feel too much pain to play.”.
Thank you Kalacs and Mark.
This is really sad. As someone who suffers from two different elbow-related repetitive stress injuries/conditions (i.e., golfer’s elbow and cubital tunnel syndrome), I know from experience that while therapy is helpful the best thing to be done is to avoid the (repetitive) activities that cause the problems in the first place.
It’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that tennis elbow could lead to Ronnie’s retirement, possibly sooner rather than later. At the very least, there seems to be a good chance that Ronnie won’t be able to play as much or as well as he did over the previous 5-6 seasons…
If the withdrawal is truly related to medical reasons and if those medical reasons refer to Ronnie’s tennis elbow, it occurs to me that there has been very little information about Ronnie’s elbow in the media over the past 6 months, with him not sharing much and the media not asking him about it…
That is true Mark, but as Kalacs commented and I mentioned at the time too, Ronnie was massaging his arm a lot again during the 6-reds. He is better trying to rest it in order to prepare for the World rather than forcing things, and risk to have to withdraw from the World Championship. Fingers crossed it proves to be the right decision
Elbow apparently, it’s on twitter. :(=
Yes, just saw this. Ty.
Apparently Ronnie initially tweeted that he will be receiving a cortisone injection for his elbow next week, but deleted that tweet…
2 thoughts about it:
1) last week during the 6 reds, Ronnie checked his elbow a few times especially – I think – against Wattana.
2) there was something about Ronnie’s post match:”vetoed” or not “vetoed” story.
The atmosphere is not the best there i believe.
P.S.: Mon I got your mail from yesterday but in my mobile i cannot use gmail for some reason, will write you an answer later today 🙂
You are right about the atmosphere in snooker and thanks for letting me know about your answer.
The comment on the WST website (https://wst.tv/osullivan-pulls-out-of-wst-classic/)
states medical reasons for the withdrawal:
“Sunday 19 Mar 2023 10:50AM
Ronnie O’Sullivan has withdrawn from the WST Classic in Leicester for medical reasons. ….”
Thanks Silvry. Not sure how I missed that … and not sure how it can be posted this morning when WST only just put the news on twitter either.
Mabe typical WST communication strategy/ policy? 🤔
Oh, this is really a terrible season for Ronnie – and his fans. 😦 Maybe the cue is still not good?