Ronnie O’Sullivan believes snooker has entered an era in which no single player will dominate the sport, insisting that the competitive depth across the tour has grown too strong for anyone to replicate the supremacy once enjoyed by Steve Davis or Stephen Hendry.
Speaking ahead of his 50th birthday on Friday, the seven-time world champion offered an unusually modest assessment of his own standing, placing himself in what he described as a “third tier” of current contenders.
The observation comes during a season that has produced 11 winners from 11 tournaments, an unprecedented spread that O’Sullivan views as evidence of a landscape in permanent flux.
O’Sullivan, whose 41 ranking titles remain unmatched, said: “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.”
He outlined what he sees as a multi-layered hierarchy.
“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," he stated.
"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.
Ronnie O’Sullivan believes snooker has entered an era in which no single player will dominate the sport, insisting that the competitive depth across the tour has grown too strong for anyone to replicate the supremacy once enjoyed by Steve Davis or Stephen Hendry
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"That’s like your second tier. And then you’ve got your third tier, which would probably be me, Barry Hawkins, Ding Junhui.”
Despite the close margins he perceives across the circuit, O’Sullivan argued that daily form still dictates who advances at the business end of tournaments.
“I think there are levels, where you’d say: ‘Well, these are probably better than these and these are probably better than those.’ But there’s not a lot in it. You know, it’s just on the day maybe," he stated.
His tier system notably omitted Zhao Xintong, the 28-year-old Chinese player who recently claimed the £250,000 Riyadh Season Championship after winning 13 of 20 frames.
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Five quirky facts snooker fans need to know | PA/GBNEWSAsked about the omission, O’Sullivan said: “Oh, Zhao, I’d probably put him in the third tier with me, probably somewhere like that.
"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.”
O’Sullivan is preparing to face Zhou Yuelong in the last 32 of the UK Championship on Tuesday, a tournament he holds in particularly high regard.
With eight titles to his name, dating back to his first in 1993, he considers the event more enjoyable than the World Championship due to its shorter format.
“The UK Championship is definitely one of my favourite tournaments. Obviously it was the first major that I won," he said.
Ronnie O'Sullivan is no longer the dominant force he once was
|PA
"I have always liked where they have played it. York is a great city. It’s got that special feeling about it, the history, Steve Davis and Hendry.
"It was always an important tournament just behind the World Championship. In many ways, it’s got the prestige of a World Championship, but without the intensity of 17 days.
"It’s just a week. A week of playing but it’s still a special, special tournament, you know.”
The current strength of the field marks a striking shift from O’Sullivan’s comments five years ago, when he dismissed the emerging generation as “not even amateur” level.
At the time he said: “If you look at the younger players coming through, they are not that good really. Most of them would do well as half-decent amateurs, not even amateurs. They are so bad.
"A lot of them you see now, you look at them and think, ‘I would have to lose an arm and a leg to fall out of the top 50’. That is why we are still hovering around, because of how poor it is down that end.”