O’Sullivan and Williams to treat Crucible crowd
Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Williams meet in a cracking last-16 tie of the snooker world championship this afternoon.
O’Sullivan is gunning for a fourth Crucible crown, while Williams is looking to tie O’Sullivan on three. Williams is the form player, recently winning the China Open, and O’Sullivan is a player who can always light up an arena. The match is set for fireworks when they meet.
When both men last played one another, it was in The Masters semi-final, and it was a belter, with The Rocket winning a high-quality encounter 6-5. O’Sullivan and Williams have had a sketchy friendship in the past, but both get along and have put behind them a feud from 2003. At the Irish Open that year, O’Sullivan said that Williams is a player who “rubs you up the wrong way.” Williams responded to this comment by saying “I always want to stick it up him every time we play.”
Both have now left this in the past, and get along fine. “We get on great. I texted him to say well done in China. I can’t take the words back but I’ve apologised and you move on, you get older, and it’s water under the bridge,” said O’Sullivan.
In the first round, O’Sullivan beat Liang Wenbo 10-7, while Williams overcame Marcus Campbell 10-5.
O’Sullivan struggled in the win against Liang and despite leading 7-2 from the first session, O’Sullivan was missing too many balls. He still managed to somehow salvage a 9-3 lead. With the match against Williams looking likely for O’Sullivan, Liang fought back, and reduced his arrears to 9-7. However, O’Sullivan found something and clinched the tie with a typically effortless break of 73.
“I had to find something from somewhere, the pressure was getting on me a bit. It was quite nerve-racking out there. The nerves play a big part here unless you settle. Unless you get into your rhythm early it can be tough.
“You can miss anything out there sometimes and that proved to be the case. But thankfully I just managed to nick a lead after that first session.
“I just didn't get going today and he played alright, towards the end he looked quite dangerous. He missed some balls, but sometimes in a first round match you do experience a bit of pressure out there,” said O’Sullivan.
It was a different prospect for Williams, as he won his match 10-5. The recent China Open champion had a 5-4 lead after a scrappy opening session.
Williams was not at his best, but the experience of the Welshman was telling in the end, and he did enough to win the match.
“It was a bit of a struggle, it certainly wasn’t a 10-5 victory to me, more like a match that could have been 10-8 or 10-9 either way really. I am just over the moon with the result more than the performance.
“Hopefully I will play a lot better against Ronnie and the match will be as good as it looks on paper. All season I have been consistent. In China I played well all through the competition, but you can’t keep playing well all the time so hopefully that is my bad performance out of the way. Everyone can win when they are playing well, but it is about winning those matches when you are not playing as well as the day before,” said Williams.
Two former world champions will pit their wits against each other, and if it is anything like their last encounter, we are all set for a thrilling match.
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