World Grand Prix Day Three – First Session Round Up
Xiao Guodong beat his idol Ronnie O’Sullivan 5-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the World Grand Prix as Chinese players continued to thrive in Hong Kong.
Xiao admits he has been a fan of O’Sullivan for many years but after his success over the past two seasons, notably winning the Wuhan Open twice, the Chinese ace is now one place ahead of his hero at tenth in the Johnstone’s Paint World Rankings. And after losing four of their first five meetings, Xiao has now won his last two fixtures against the Rocket – at the 2024 Champion of Champions and again today.
The 36-year-old is into his third ranking quarter-final of the season and will meet Si Jiahui on Friday. There will be at least four Chinese players in the last-eight line-up at the Kai Tak Arena, and possibly as many as seven.
A 144 total clearance, the new target for the £10,000 high break prize, gave Xiao the opening frame today and he added the second with a run of 78 for 2-0. O’Sullivan, who hasn’t won a ranking title since landing his third World Grand Prix crown in January 2024, battled back to 3-3 with breaks of 74 and 79 but Xiao finished strongly to take the last two with 58 and 66.
“Ronnie is my idol, I want him to do well and win tournaments. But this is sport and whenever I play, I want to win,” said Xiao. “I was nervous in the last two frames but I tried to be like Ronnie and be more relaxed. When you play a top player you want to show something, not just sit there. If you lose, the next time you try hard and maybe you will have a chance to win. When Chinese players do well, the others also want to win and we support each other. We improve together.”
There is no point kidding ourselves. Ronnie isn’t the player he once was, and will never be that player again. Time waits for nobody. It’s hard to watch, hard to accept but it is how life goes. I would be surprised – and very happy of course – if he were to win another tournament but I don’t believe it will happen. 😔
That said Xiao played really well and I don’t want to take anything away from him with the above observation.
Here are excerpts of the match, shared on YouTube:
7 thoughts on “2026 World Grand Prix – Ronnie exits the tournament in Round 2”
He is obviously past his prime but I still wonder why he can’t at least play to the level Higgins or Williams do. They are not at their peak either but still play to a good level.
I mean they are even a few months older than Ronnie. And Ronnie has more natural talent than them so I would have expected him to play to a better level than his peers but it’s not the case for whatever reason.
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The “whatever reason” could be pressure or lack of it – they put on themselves. I remember Willo a few years back really struggling, dropping outside the top 16 and not qualifying for the Crucible. He was on the verge of quitting. Hi wife, Jo, convinced him to give it another year and to play for fun as if he was in the club. It worked wonders. About Higgins i’m not sure, but I believe that Ronnie has too much expectations weighting on him, his own and others’ expectations too. Also, he’s an anxious person by nature, unlike Willo. None of that helps.
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He’s shit alright but to be fair every time you said he wouldn’t win another event he did
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6 Chinese in the Last 8.
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And we could still have an all-English final.
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Looks like Ronnie has reached the end of the road, and will probably retire at the end of this season or next (depending, in part, on his contract with Saudi). I can’t see him really wanting to repeat this season next season, but maybe he has to play another year.
I had been holding out some hope that his poor performances have just been a result of a lack of practice or interest and that he was saving “the good stuff” for the Crucible, but I no longer think that’s true. I do think he’ll be more committed to winning at Sheffield than he is at all other events, but I no longer think he will be able to significantly raise his level of play at the World Championships.
Looking back, we can now say for sure that he has been in decline for the past few years, and that even in the most recent season when he won a bunch of titles, as he himself acknowledged he didn’t actually play very well but benefitted mostly from his opponents’ mistakes.
It’s starting to feel a bit surprising now that he was able to make it to a decider in the Final of the Saudi event this year, and to make the two 147s in one match…
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Early in the season most players are “rusty” and don’t play to their full potential. Years back Ronnie used to consistently do very well in the first event of the season, probably because he is/was so “natural” and needed less practice than others to reach a decent level. We don’t know -and have no “right” to know – what exactly is happening to him, if anything at all actually “is happening”. At 50 his eyesight
may
have changed/deteriorated. It happens to most of us around that age. If that is the case, wearing glasses or lenses are not necessarily the “easy” solution. Glasses change your perception of distances. Lenses can become very uncomfortable after a couple of hours especially in a dry/hot atmosphere. But it can be something else entirely or it may be nothing but natural decline with age. The type of game Ronnie plays is very demanding.
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He is obviously past his prime but I still wonder why he can’t at least play to the level Higgins or Williams do. They are not at their peak either but still play to a good level.
I mean they are even a few months older than Ronnie. And Ronnie has more natural talent than them so I would have expected him to play to a better level than his peers but it’s not the case for whatever reason.
The “whatever reason” could be pressure or lack of it – they put on themselves. I remember Willo a few years back really struggling, dropping outside the top 16 and not qualifying for the Crucible. He was on the verge of quitting. Hi wife, Jo, convinced him to give it another year and to play for fun as if he was in the club. It worked wonders. About Higgins i’m not sure, but I believe that Ronnie has too much expectations weighting on him, his own and others’ expectations too. Also, he’s an anxious person by nature, unlike Willo. None of that helps.
He’s shit alright but to be fair every time you said he wouldn’t win another event he did
6 Chinese in the Last 8.
And we could still have an all-English final.
Looks like Ronnie has reached the end of the road, and will probably retire at the end of this season or next (depending, in part, on his contract with Saudi). I can’t see him really wanting to repeat this season next season, but maybe he has to play another year.
I had been holding out some hope that his poor performances have just been a result of a lack of practice or interest and that he was saving “the good stuff” for the Crucible, but I no longer think that’s true. I do think he’ll be more committed to winning at Sheffield than he is at all other events, but I no longer think he will be able to significantly raise his level of play at the World Championships.
Looking back, we can now say for sure that he has been in decline for the past few years, and that even in the most recent season when he won a bunch of titles, as he himself acknowledged he didn’t actually play very well but benefitted mostly from his opponents’ mistakes.
It’s starting to feel a bit surprising now that he was able to make it to a decider in the Final of the Saudi event this year, and to make the two 147s in one match…
Early in the season most players are “rusty” and don’t play to their full potential. Years back Ronnie used to consistently do very well in the first event of the season, probably because he is/was so “natural” and needed less practice than others to reach a decent level. We don’t know -and have no “right” to know – what exactly is happening to him, if anything at all actually “is happening”. At 50 his eyesight
may
have changed/deteriorated. It happens to most of us around that age. If that is the case, wearing glasses or lenses are not necessarily the “easy” solution. Glasses change your perception of distances. Lenses can become very uncomfortable after a couple of hours especially in a dry/hot atmosphere. But it can be something else entirely or it may be nothing but natural decline with age. The type of game Ronnie plays is very demanding.