Ronnie O’Sullivan forgets Zhao Xintong in remarkable ‘third tier’ claim | Other | Sport
Snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan has put himself in the ‘third tier’ of current stars, alongside reigning World Champion Zhao Xintong. The Rocket returns to action in the UK Championship on Tuesday as he looks to avoid a third straight loss.
He takes on China’s Zhou Yuelong in the round of 32. O’Sullivan fell to a 6-5 loss against Jack Lisowski in the China international championships early last month, before losing 4-0 against Sean Murphy in the Riyadh Championship just a couple of weeks later.
Ahead of the game, the 49-year-old has outlined that the days of a player dominating the sport are gone. He said, via The Sun: “I think it’s always good to have a dominant player.
“But now the standard is so high in snooker, I just think it won’t happen. “You know, I don’t think there’s any player that’s head and shoulders above everyone else.
“You’ve probably got, at the moment, three or four tiers. You’ve got Judd Trump and Kyren Wilson, probably the best two players in the world.
“Maybe put Neil Robertson and Mark Selby in there, too, because they’ve had good seasons. Then you’ve got like Mark Williams, possibly John Higgins. Who else is there? Maybe Shaun Murphy, he’s been doing well. He’s looking strong. That’s like your second tier.
“And then you’ve got your third tier, which would probably be me, Barry Hawkins, Ding Junhui. I think there are levels, where you’d say: ‘Well, these are probably better than these and these are probably better than those.’
“Oh, Zhao, I’d probably put him in the third tier with me, probably somewhere like that,” he said. “I definitely wouldn’t put him in Judd and Kyren’s level at the moment.
“Would you put him in Selby’s? Well, he hasn’t done it enough, consistently.
“I think Zhao needs to have a good two, three years consistently performing at the highest level for that to happen. It’s not easy to do that. But he’s definitely got the talent to do it. He needs to have a good run of tournaments.”
