As I expected, but certainly didn’t wish for, John Higgins beat Ronnie in the round of 16 at this year World Championship.
You will find the details of the scores on snooker.org as always.
It was a high quality match: they had 22 breaks over 50 between them, 13 by Ronnie, 9 by Higgins. The highest break of the match was a 137 by Ronnie in frame 4.
You will find the report by WST here: https://www.wst.tv/news/2026/april/27/Higgins-Beats-O-Sullivan-With-Huge-Fight-Back/
HIGGINS BEATS O’SULLIVAN WITH HUGE FIGHT-BACK
John Higgins completed arguably his best ever Crucible comeback as recovered a 9-4 deficit to beat old rival Ronnie O’Sullivan 13-12, reaching the quarter-finals of the Halo World Championship for the 20th time.
O’Sullivan looked at the top of his game as he built leads of 6-2, 8-3 and 9-4, but he admitted he made too many mistakes under pressure in the second half of the contest and his goal of winning a record-breaking eighth world title is over for another year. Higgins, who walks out to the Stone Roses’ ‘I Am The Resurrection’, came back to life at the key moments and played superb snooker in the concluding session, firing three centuries as well as a vital 49 in the decider after his opponent had missed a crucial red.
Four-time Crucible king Higgins will surely cherish this as one of his greatest moments in Sheffield as he beat an adversary he has been battling for more than three decades, though he kept his celebrations modest, aware that he must go again on Tuesday afternoon against Neil Robertson or Chris Wakelin. At the age of 50, Higgins knows he must conserve energy in this marathon of the body and mind, but having come through this challenge he will surely believe that a fifth title is within his capability.
This was the seventh ‘El Clasico’ meeting between O’Sullivan and Higgins at the Crucible and the Wishaw man has now won four of those, and also scored his first victory in their overall head-to-head since 2021, ending a series of three defeats. It’s the fifth consecutive year that Higgins has reached the quarter-finals, though in each of the last three he has fallen at that stage, including a painful 13-12 reverse on the final black against Mark Williams last year. Showing a high level of consistency this season, world number five Higgins has reached three finals and three more semi-finals, though silverware has eluded him so far.
In the other prominent match Wu Yize beat Mark Selby by 13-11.
Here you will find the report by WST: https://www.wst.tv/news/2026/april/27/wu-scores-first-win-over-selby-to-make-quarters/
WU SCORES FIRST WIN OVER SELBY TO MAKE QUARTERS
Chinese 22-year-old Wu Yize scored his first ever win over Mark Selby, a 13-11 triumph, to make the quarter-finals of the Halo World Championship at the Crucible Theatre.
The talented Wu, who lost in the opening round of his previous two trips to the Theatre of Dreams, now progresses to a maiden quarter-final. He will face either world number one Judd Trump or Hossein Vafaei in a battle to reach the hallowed single table setup.
Wu is now three wins away from becoming the youngest World Champion since Stephen Hendry, who was 21 when he lifted the title in 1990.
The Lanzhou cueman came of age at this season’s International Championship in Nanjing, where he defeated John Higgins in the final to lift a maiden ranking crown. It was a case of third time lucky for Wu, who lost the English and Scottish Open finals in 2024.
Selby arrived in Sheffield as one of the key contenders, after a season which has seen him win the UK Championship and the Champion of Champions. However, his recent pattern of early Crucible exits continued.
Since making the 2023 final, the Englishman has now endured two first round exits on top of his second round loss this afternoon.
Former Rookie of the Year Wu came into the afternoon holding a slight 9-7 advantage. That was extended at the start of the session, before 89 from Selby in the 18th made it 10-8.
Wu had the first opportunity in the next but could only construct a break of 43, spurning a straightforward red to the top left. Selby pounced with 56 to steal on the colours and pull within one at 10-9.
A marathon 53-minute frame was then won by Wu to pull clear again and Selby’s frustrations uncharacteristically began to show. He violently smashed his cue off the table after missing a red in the 21st, a mistake which allowed Wu to move 12-9 up.
Selby rallied and kept the game alive with 95 in the next. However, he then left the third last red when escaping from a snooker and Wu got himself over the line.
After shaking hands with his illustrious opponent he was afforded a standing ovation and bowed to the Crucible crowd before exiting the arena.
This post will be updated later, and its unusual presentation is because I’m using a tablet at the moment instead of my mac laptop … that needs some repair unfortunately…
I agree with Jeff. Ronnie had more than enough chances to win, but didn’t take them. At 9-7 he was still in with a good chance, but again missed a red that he normally gets and gave the frame away.
It wasn’t about Higgins. He beat him 6-0 in the final of the John Virgo tournament just before the WC and didn’t lose a match against him since 2021.
Instead, Ronnie doesn’t play a lot of tournaments and high level pressure matches
nowadays and therefore is less prepared to handle high pressure situations.
He admitted that after his match.
It’s not that he doesn’t have the ability to play snooker at a very high level.
The first session of his second round WC match showed that.
A lot remains possible, it’s up to Ronnie.
Positive is that after feeling bad about his game for 3 years, he enjoys his snooker again. I hope he will play more next season and as I said a lot remains possible then.
Maybe there will be a reward from the snooker gods for Ronnie next season !
Always a fan.
I hope so too Sergio.
This is what you call a proper choke or bottle job. That’s what it was. He led 9:4, his opponent was really struggling and he brought him back by making silly errors and gifted him the match.
We probably have to come to terms that he’ll never win an 8th World title. The amount of matches he threw away in recent years, particularly here at the Crucible as well shows that he doesn’t have it in him anymore to win an 8th.
I agree … he won’t win a 8th world title and may not even win any sort of title unless he plays more. And even so, I’m not sure. But I’m also not sure it was a bottle job. I called it ahead of the match because I had seen it before. The psychological interaction between the three of 92 is strange and I can’t explain it but it’s been that way for decades: Highins has the upper hand over Ronnie, Ronnie over Willo, and, to an extend, Willo over Higgins.
People like Higgins and Selby will always cause him more problems than other opponents but I don’t think it was the reason here. Higgins was done and dusted at 4:9 and played pretty poor for 75% of the match. Ronnie also beat him the last 3 or 4 times which includes the Crucible in 2022.
I just think there is a habit in recent years that Ronnie is losing matches from great winning positions and has a tendency to collapse out of nowhere. The Luca match at the WC comes to my mind where he was 10:6 ahead and then couldn’t pot a ball in the final session. He lost 7 on the spin against Willo in the Tour Champs final. Against Bingham and Zhao at the WC he also crumbled. And even against Thepchaiya he lead 4:0 and fell 6:4 behind in the World Open final. And at that stage Thepchaiya wasn’t playing great.
There is a clear pattern imo. Probably an age thing, no doubt. But unfortunately that’s the reason why he’ll never win an 8th. He just can’t sustain a consistent level anymore.
Unfortunate, but not unexpected. A bit painful, because Ronnie had so many chances and squandered them, but beside age, I suppose it’s also the result of not being match sharp: he sat out most of the season, while Higgins laboured through it. I know, I know that in 2013… but it was in 2013, which is 13 years ago.
A pity also, because the first session showed some fabulous Ronnie, but while he is fabulous when he is on, as he rightly said, to win the Worlds you don’t need to be great, but steady and steadiness has been missing from his repertoire for awhile. Like it’s been said, he has other priorities than adding to his illustrious career and as a result, add he will not. Neither do I think that Higgins has a chance to win the trophy, but kudos to him for his determination. I suppose it’s also a great thing that these two legends played each other in such a good match., on such a big stage (even though they met a little too early) and not at some oldies’ tournament for the hasbeens and the neverbeens.
On another note it seems that the “fourth major” and the “mini world championship” signed in a contract for 10 years terminated after 2 and good riddance to it. I’m sorry about the players who earned points there which they cannot defend now and might therefore plummet in the ranking, but let it be a lesson to WST and all the Saudi-lovers.