Ronnie beat Zhou Yuelong by 4-3 this afternoon to book his place in the quarter-finals at the 2024 World Grand Prix. He will lay Gary Wilson tomorrow over best of 9 frames.

Here are the scores and the stats:

as well as the report by WST

Ronnie O’Sullivan, who hasn’t lost since November, kept his tremendous winning run going with a thrilling 4-3 success against Zhou Yuelong to reach the quarter-finals of the Spreadex World Grand Prix.

O’Sullivan’s last defeat came against Zhang Anda in the semi-finals of the International Championship more than two months ago – since then he has won 11 consecutive matches, a streak which has given him the UK Championship and Masters titles. Now in the hunt for a 41st ranking crown, he delighted the crowd in Leicester today in a superb match which included two centuries and seven more breaks over 50.

The Rocket is through to his 141st ranking event quarter-final and his next opponent, on Friday at 1pm, will be another player in form: Scottish Open champion Gary Wilson who saw off Tom Ford 4-2.

A marvellous 67 clearance gave O’Sullivan the opening frame today, then a 107 put him 2-0 ahead. China’s Zhou responded in kind as a 76 clearance gave him frame three, then a run of 102 made it 2-2. The fifth came down to the last red and Zhou failed to escape from a tricky snooker, handing his opponent the chance to go 3-2 ahead. Breaks of 65 and 56 got Zhou back to 3-3, but he missed a tricky red to a centre pocket early in the decider, and O’Sullivan was typically clinical in a match-winning 90.

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And the images shared by WST in the above piece

Actually there were a lot of mistakes in this match. Ronnie wasn’t the best player in this match, but he played a good decider. He was full of praise for Zhou but quite downbeat about his performance .

Here are the quotes in writing (source Yahoo)

O’Sullivan told ITV4: “I’ve got to really consider whether I can carry on feeling how I’m feeling out there – I just don’t get any enjoyment from the way I’m hitting the ball.

“I feel like it’s just hard work, I haven’t a clue where the balls are going, and a lot of it’s just guess-work.

“The worst thing is you’re winning bloody tournaments as well. If I was getting pumped every round playing like that it would be an easy decision to make.”

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“It’s been happening like this for 25 or 30 years, so it’s nothing new,” O’Sullivan added.

“It’s the only thing I’ve known and it’s hard not to do this because it’s my job, it’s all I know, so I’ve struggled through it.

“But I can’t accept bad cueing, I’d rather cue well and lose than cue awful and win tournaments. I get no satisfaction out of it, I really don’t.”

Ronnie doesn’t appear to be in a good place at the moment and probably really needs a break. He looks tired and a bit depressed. This is very obvious in the interview he gave to Rob Walker. Thank you to Ben and Kalacs who shared the link in comments.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7XNhRc13Vpk%3Flist%3DRDCMUCBzDz6beXDfMtfxQdEutD_w

Interestingly, Hendry had given his opinion on the “bad blood” between Ronnie and Ali Carter and the outbursts in the media room afterwards and also mentioned how much snooker at the highest level can take out of the players mentally. (source Phil Haigh writing for metro.co.uk)

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Stephen Hendry has put Ronnie O’Sullivan and Ali Carter’s recent spat down to the pair being ‘mentally exhausted’ after their Masters campaigns, but predicts their next meeting will be ‘spicy’.

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Hendry gave his reaction to the headline-grabbing beef, noting that both men will have been mentally drained after a high profile week at one of the sport’s biggest events.

‘It is between the two of them and obviously there is bad blood there, there’s no doubt about it, and it’s gone back quite a long way. Obviously they’ve known each other a long time,’ Hendry said on the Snooker Club podcast.

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Hopefully Ronnie will be able to have a good night rest and feel better tomorrow.