The 2023 Shanghai Masters – Ronnie beats Carter in the Last 16 Round

Ronnie beat Ali Carter by 6-3 in the second round at the 2023 Shanghai Masters. It was Ronnie’s first true competitive match of the season and I was not sure what to expect. He wasn’t at his very best, but he played well enough, especially after being pegged back to 3-3. Ali himself was playing well too. Both made some mistakes but that’s normal. Perfect performances in snooker are rare. It’s a difficult game and we should remember that.

Ronnie is clearly motivated to do well in this event.

Here are the scores:

And the report shared by WST:

Rocket Launch In Shanghai

Defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan defeated Ali Carter 6-3 in the last 16 of the Shanghai Masters, to extend his winning streak in the event to 16 matches.

The Rocket won the previous three runnings of the tournament between 2017 and 2019 and hasn’t lost in Shanghai for seven years. His last defeat in the city came in 2016 against Michael Holt.

This evening’s match was O’Sullivan’s first appearance of his 32nd season on the professional circuit, against an opponent he has fared well against historically. Victory extend’s his winning head-to-head record against Carter to 16-1. O’Sullivan now faces a mouth watering quarter-final showdown with John Higgins.

O’Sullivan took the opening two frames in tonight’s last 16 encounter, before Carter got his first frame on the board. Frame four appeared to be in the balance, with a number of red in difficult positions, but seven-time World Champion O’Sullivan manoeuvred them into the open and cleared with a brilliant 99 to make it 3-1.

Carter, who won the Shanghai Masters back in 2010, refused to fade away and got back into contention with runs of 68 and 83 to restore parity at 3-3. However, 39-time ranking event winner O’Sullivan then produced his best snooker of the match and burst clear to the finish. Breaks of 101, 74 and 81 helped him to three on the bounce to secure a 6-3 win.

“I’d love to win this tournament and even when it was a ranking tournament, it was a fantastic event. It is a great city here in Shanghai and I really enjoy coming to this place. I love to do well in the really big tournaments and this is a very important one,” said 47-year-old O’Sullivan.

“I’ve already put him in my legends list, so everyone knows what I think about John as a player. He has been playing really well so far this season. He looked really good in Germany and has looked phenomenal in his matches here so far. It will be a tough game, but if I can give him a decent match then I will be happy with that.”

And some more quotes, reported by David Caulfield

O’Sullivan, who has won the last three editions of the Shanghai Masters, was also asked about his opinion on young players in today’s game and who his all-time top five legends of the sport are

“I’d probably say Stephen Hendry number one, Steve Davis number two, Joe Davis number three, Ray Reardon number four, and maybe John Higgins as number five.”

“There are some great young players (these days). Everybody is about as good as each other, there’s no standout player.

“When Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis were around, they were so much better than everybody else, so it was easy to just pick one.

“But now, you have maybe five, ten, or 15 players who are maybe all as good as each other.

“I think the sport needs someone. I think the sport is always more exciting if one player can dominate, because everybody wants to see that player lose.

“At the moment, there isn’t really one player dominating. There are many, many good players, there’s a lot of very good young players.

“(There are) some good players from Belgium – Ben Mertens is good and obviously Luca winning the World Championship. China has many, many good players.

“Si Jiahui played fantastically in the World Championship – a great talent, a great player. It’d be nice to see one of them really dominate.

“Every sport needs one, like (Max) Verstappen. He’s winning everything, and people just want to see if he’s going to lose today.

“People want to watch the really dominant players to see if somebody can beat them, so snooker needs one of them.”

Ronnie will need to play better to beat John Higgins probably. john is certainly a lot match-sharper currently and is playing very well. But if Ronnie really wants it … we shall see.

Here are some more pictures shared on social media, by WST on twitter and various sources on weibo