![]() In darts too, snooker’s indoor sporting cousin, youth is everywhere. The youthful contenders pushing for the majors grows stronger by the year. Meanwhile the golfing production line rolling out of the American college system grows if anything ever more robust. He may have beaten a field of real depth but he has not been able to reproduce anything close to a performance of that calibre since. True, in 2019 Tiger Woods won the Masters at Augusta 22 years on from first donning the green jacket. Although at this rate, given the lack of competition, most of them could still be winning titles in their seventies. No, this is a genuine concern about what will happen to the game he loves when his generation eventually tire of the relentless grind of the circuit. He is way too shrewd an analyst for that. This is not him being arrogant, delivering the cliched not like it was in my day lament of the ageing performer. ![]() In the new documentary about O’Sullivan, he expresses his worries about the lack of youthful talent in his sport. But for only one man in his twenties, never mind his teens, to make it to the top 10 is a real indictment. It takes time to master the table, to understand the processes, to develop sufficient mental strength to be able to sit in the corner watching an opponent notch up a 100 break and not simply surrender. Luca Brecel, at 28, is the youngest.įor sure, snooker is a game that values experience above all qualities. Of the current top 10, he, Mark Selby, Mark Williams, Neil Robertson, John Higgins and Shaun Murphy are all in their forties, and three of the other four are in their thirties. But O’Sullivan is not alone in flying the flag for the middle-aged. ![]() And Ronnie is simply the finest old boy around.īack when O’Sullivan first won the UK title as an effervescent teenager, the very idea that a 48-year-old would be in contention for the big prizes was fanciful. Thirty years at the top, three decades of dazzle and delight, half a lifetime of triumph: what an extraordinary performer O’Sullivan is.Įxcept his magnificent win came with a significant caveat, a detail about which O’Sullivan himself has long been anxious: who else is there? Whose breath does the great man feel on the collar of his dress shirt? Where exactly is the next generation of talent pushing him aside? The fact is, snooker is becoming ever more an old man’s game. When Ronnie O’Sullivan became the oldest player ever to win the UK Snooker Championship, precisely 30 years after he had been the youngest champion in the same competition, it was rightly lauded as one of the most remarkable examples of longevity in world sport. ![]()
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