David Hendon: Ronnie O'Sullivan and the painful pursuit of perfection ahead of the 2025 World Championship

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Will Ronnie O'Sullivan feature at the upcoming World Snooker Championship? And can he win a record eighth title? Those are the big questions that surround The Rocket's quest for history at the sport's biggest stage. David Hendon looks at what it will take for the 49-year-old to create history once again and cement his GOAT status. Watch the World Championship live on TNT Sports and discovery+.

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Two questions surround Ronnie O’Sullivan at this year’s World Championship: will he play and, if he does, can he win a record eighth world title?

O’Sullivan has not hit a ball on the circuit since deliberately breaking his cue at the Championship League in January. As ever, there is a soap opera-like fog of intrigue, speculation and anticipation enveloping him as we approach the sport’s showpiece event. All eyes are on him even when he’s not playing.

O’Sullivan made his debut at the Crucible in 1993. The draw included legendary players he had grown up watching, the likes of Terry Griffiths, Dennis Taylor, Doug Mountjoy and Willie Thorne, players who must have seemed ancient to the then 17-year-old.

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He’s now 49, a veteran in age but champion as recently as three years ago. But could O’Sullivan really turn around a career crisis and win again on snooker’s most celebrated stage? If it seems far-fetched, then you have not been paying attention.

It took O’Sullivan until his ninth season on tour to become world champion in 2001, following up with wins in 2004, 2008 and 2012. By then, 20 years on the circuit, most of them in the glare of the spotlight, had taken their toll. Aside from one low-key match, he did not play again until the 2013 championship.

There was much expectation and theorising as to how O’Sullivan would fare after a year out. He emphatically batted it all away by capturing world title No. 5.

Then came a bruising defeat to Mark Selby in the 2014 final. O’Sullivan had been the best player for 16 days and led 10-5 at one point, but on the last day was comprehensively outmanoeuvred and lost 18-14.

His first defeat in a world final, from an apparently winning position, seemed to affect him at the Crucible in the years that followed, and it was not until the August lockdown championship of 2020 that he appeared again in the one-table stage.

Revenge over Selby was taken and O’Sullivan beat Kyren Wilson in the final before his defeat of Judd Trump in 2022 saw him equal Stephen Hendry’s modern day record of seven world titles.

Fans of O’Sullivan will hold on to what happened in 2013 as evidence that he does not need sustained week-in, week-out match-play to stay sharp. The difference 12 years on, though, is that he no longer has the cue he has used since 2011, the one he employed for his last four Crucible triumphs.

I was at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester the day he smashed it into several pieces. He had been building towards a full-on implosion. He seemed vulnerable, in need of help. His behaviour was not nasty – far from it, he was actually apologetic – but he had the air of someone about to give way to growing pressure.

At root was frustration at how he was playing. O’Sullivan does not see snooker like anyone else. To most players and observers, his C-game would be something to aspire to.

But the man himself has an almost unreachable view of perfection. He has glimpsed it in patches, produced performances for the ages, but there is something intangible about this level of play, and it soon slips out of his grasp.

O’Sullivan has never been happy with just playing well. He believes, indeed he knows, that snooker can be played on a higher plane than this. His constant search for this state of green baize nirvana has led to bouts of unhappiness, to a sense of being unfulfilled even though he has had the greatest career of anyone. Yet without the pain, there is no glory.

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This attitude is what sets him apart from the rest. Most players could only dream of playing like O’Sullivan at his very best. They rightly play to their own strengths. Sometimes this means neutralising his game, something Selby masterfully achieved in their 2014 final.

Performance anxiety is what O’Sullivan has cited as the reason for his absence, the feeling that he cannot go out and play to a high level with all eyes on him. Over the course of the Crucible marathon, the attention is like every other event multiplied by a thousand. The pressure cooker arena has humbled everyone at some point, even the true greats.

So to shut all of that out will be very difficult. It was telling that his 2020 triumph was completed largely without any spectators, therefore with less day-to-day demands on his time. We saw what the 2022 win did to him emotionally in the immediate aftermath. Can he really dig deep into his mental reserves for another 17 days?

Many snooker fans will hope so. Ronnie divides opinion within the sport but has enormous goodwill with the public. To watch him in full flow is to experience genuine sporting greatness. What nobody could surely claim is that the World Championship would be a better event without him.

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The truth is, we do not know what sort of shape O’Sullivan’s game is in. Even before he broke his cue, he was not getting results. He played in six ranking events in early season and only reached one semi-final.

Logic says it should not be his year for an eighth world title, but he has never had much time for conventional wisdom.

Would there not be something very Ronnie O’Sullivan if, after sitting out a season in which various other narratives have dominated, in particular the Trump v Wilson rivalry, this king across the water steamed in and claimed the crown again?

If it happened – and it remains a big if – it would surely be the defining moment of this most extraordinary career.

Watch the 2025 World Championship live on TNT Sports and discovery+

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