Ronnie O’Sullivan says ‘horrible’ Crucible demolition of Pang Junxu was ‘hell’

Ronnie O’Sullivan is into the World Snooker Championship quarter-finals with two comfortable wins, but says his 13-4 win over Pang Junxu was ‘hell’ and says his game feels as bad as it ever has.

The Rocket made two centuries and 10 half-centuries as he brushed aside Pang, needing just one frame of the final third session as he made 95 to end things very early on Monday night.

This came after a 10-4 win over Ali Carter in the opening round as O’Sullivan breezes into the last eight despite not playing since January before he turned up in Sheffield.

The results may have come, but he does not feel like his form, rhythm and enjoyment have come with them, insisting that he does not feel good about his game at all.

O’Sullivan told the BBC: ‘I feel so unconfident. It’s horrible, it’s horrible even when you’re playing alright, but let alone when you’re struggling.’

Asked what he is working on to rebuild his game to where he will be happy with it, he said: ‘I don’t even know to be honest. It’s just a feeling.

‘A safety shot I played there, I hit is so thick I can’t even see where I’m hitting it. It’s just guess work. Then you try something else and the shot looks different again.

‘In the balls I was alright tonight because what I’ve changed felt alright, but there’s so many different parts of the game that you’ve got to get right.
It’s hell, to be honest with you.’

He added: ‘It’s not even about winning, it’s about going out there and enjoying it, feeling confident enough to do yourself justice. I’m not even bothered about winning. It’s nice to win. You just want to be part of good games, I’ve always felt better if I’ve played well in the game and lost than when I’ve played terrible and won. I know I’m probably not normal, so I’ve accepted that as well.’

Both Carter and Pang struggled to find anything like their best form and O’Sullivan thinks that if they did he may well already have been beaten.

However, he does see some light at the end of the tunnel, admitting that he can be his own worst critic and some of his seven world titles have come when he felt he was playing poorly.

‘If either of my opponents that I played had played well I would have got beat, but they played poorly, they let me off the hook and I’ve managed to score a few. That’s basically how I’ve got through,’ he said.

‘I’ve won this tournament many times before playing what I consider bad, so it can be done. But in your early 40s it’s probably much more achievable than when you’re 50 and struggling to bend down and do your shoe laces up. It gets a bit hard.

‘It’s hard to judge because people say you’re not as bad as you think but feeling-wise I think it’s the worst I’ve ever felt. I don’t even know where my back arm is, where my left leg is, sometimes I can’t even see where I’m hitting. It’s difficult.’

Next up for him is Si Jiahui in the quarter-finals, someone he does expect to perform against him after losing to the 22-year-old at the Saudi Arabia Masters earlier this season.

‘This is a big acid test because he does score,’ said the Rocket. ‘The players I played in the first two rounds had enough chances to put me away but they haven’t, but I think this guy will.

‘He buried me in Saudi Arabia this year. I was scrapping but his scoring power was too much for me.’