Ronnie beat Wang Yuchen by 5-0 in his first round match at the 2024 Xi’an Grand Prix.

Here are the scores for that match:

And the part of today’s WST report relevant to the match:

On the first day of the new Xi’an Grand Prix, Ronnie O’Sullivan thrilled local fans with a 5-0 whitewash of Wang Yuchen to reach the last 64.

This is the first tournament staged in the historic city of Xi’an in China’s Shaanxi Province and seven-time World Champion O’Sullivan is clearly a fan of the location. He said: “I have spent a couple of days here in Xi’an before. It has a beautiful atmosphere, you feel as if you are on a film set. It’s definitely one of my favourite cities. I come to China for the food, the culture and the people, if I do well at snooker that’s a bonus. It was a brilliant crowd and atmosphere today, this is probably one of the best tournaments of the season now.“

O’Sullivan, age 48, was well short of his best today, but breaks of 72 and 52 helped him to a comfortable victory as he set up a second round meeting with Bulcsu Revesz on Tuesday. Asked about his performance, he said: “My game has been terrible for two years. I am looking for a longer term plan to play the way I want to, I just have to keep showing up and trying my best.”

I’m not so sure that Ronnie played that badly. It is true that he didn’t score as heavily as he can and Wang Yuchen had his chances, but there were some very good things in Ronnie’s game today as well, notably the small a break he made to take frame three was really skilful and nice. Also, he applied himself 100%.

Conditions in China are often tricky, or, at least, quite different from what is the norm in the UK events. It’s quite hot currently in Xi’an, over 30 Centigrade during the day and tomorrow will bring heavy rain and thunderstorms.

Anyway… Ronnie is through to the last 64, where he will play Bulcsú Révész.

Here are some pictures shared by WST or posted on Weibo

And these came up on Twitter (yeah I know it’s X, but … no). I’m not too sure what he’s doing exactly but I’m not complaining… 😉

PS: Ronnie loves his food and once again said how much better it is in China than in the UK. I can only agree. But Greece or Italy aren’t bad either … plenty of nice, fresh fruit and vegetables, fish … and some sumptuous desserts… WST ???