Ronnie O’Sullivan wins fourth world title at the Crucible

Ronnie O’Sullivan beat Ali Carter by 18-11 to win this year’s edition of the World Championship and his forth world title after the ones he captured in 2011, 2004 and 2008. The player nicknamed “Rocket” was last crowned champion four years ago after he beat the same Ali Carter, but by 18-8.

O’Sullivan started his 17-day Crucible journey with a classical clash of style, his first-round opponent being Peter Ebdon, continued with another classical encounter against Mark Williams closely followed by a great victory obtained in front of the Australian Neil Robertson, the semi-finals putting him face-to-face with Matthew Stevens, who also became his victim, before setting the final snooker dispute with Ali Carter.

The “Rocket” took a very good start in the final, the first session seeing him 5-3 ahead of Carter, by the time the second one was finishing the gap becoming even bigger, at 10-7.

Unfortunately for the “Captain” Carter, his flight was going to experience a lot of turbulence, during the third session O’Sullivan extending his lead at 14-7 with breaks of 101, 34 and 54.

However, Carter did manage to pull back three consecutive frames by using runs of 105 and 53 and reduce the gap at four points, although minutes later his opponent was flying at 15-10; a very comfortable lead which was making him favourite for winning the title.

The evening session and also the last one, began with O’Sullivan’s 70 break, a break that was putting him two frames away from victory. The only thing the “Captain” could do before entering into a straight “tail spin” was to prolong the match and pull back a frame.

From 16-11, it was just a matter of time before the “Rocket” launched himself towards the finish-line by using runs of 46 and 61 in order to conquer his fourth world title.

Celebrating the victory along with his little boy, Ronnie Jr., O’Sullivan confessed he’s not fancying retirement (in the press conference after winning over Matthew Stevens in the semi-final, O’Sullivan announced his intentions of retiring for snooker in the near future) and declared he’s in to stay in the game.

The world title comes to complete this season’s collection of trophies that Ronnie won, next to the PTC 1 and 7 Events, the Premier League and the German Masters ones.

Ramona Dragomir