Ronnie booked his place the last 16 round in Wuhan yesterday. He beat Pang Junxu by 5-4 in a very hard fought match. Ronnie is clearly giving it his best so far in Wuhan and is lucky to be scheduled in the evening session (in Wuhan) for all his matches so far. Long may it continue…

Here are the scores:

And the report by WST:

World number one Ronnie O’Sullivan came from 4-3 down to defeat young Chinese star Pang Junxu 5-4 and earn his place in the last 16.

The Rocket remains locked in a battle to stay at the top of the world rankings this week, with Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen in pursuit. However, O’Sullivan knows that Allen must win the event to stand any chance of usurping him.

The penultimate frame saw O’Sullivan fortuitously leave Pang angled in the yellow pocket. With no obvious way to escape and leave the balls safe Pang afforded O’Sullivan a chance, which he pounced upon with a run of 117 to force the decider. A break of 64 helped the seven-time World Champion take the final frame and set up a meeting with Yuan Sijun.

O’Sullivan said: “Pang is a really good player. He is a good match player, with a good temperament, hungry and a tough opponent. He has the desire to want to do well. That is always hard to play against. I just think Chinese snooker is getting stronger and stronger. There are so many good Chinese players. It was a tough game.”

As usual there are some videos shared by ES on their YouTube channel

and the last frame …

There were also images, shared on social media ( X and Weibo)

Ronnie will face Yuan Sijun today… another tough opponent.

All the results are on snooker.org as always

We still have 6 of the top 16 in the draw: Ronnie, Judd Trump, Mark Allen, Ali Carter, Barry Hawkins and Jack Lisowski. We also have 6, mostly young, Chinese players still standing: Wu Yize, Lyu Haotian, Zhang Anda, He Guoqiang, Yan Sijun and Xiao Guodong. Some good matches in prospect … play starts in 10 minutes!