O'Sullivan brush strokes create a vivid third title

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Ronnie O'Sullivan celebrates winning the World Snooker Championship for the third time

O'Sullivan: Tortured soul who defies convention pacifies his demons

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Ronnie O'Sullivan has been a man reborn since he took up running, so it was apt that he spent yesterday afternoon jogging towards the third world title which he eventually clinched at a trot here in Sheffield last night, beating Ali Carter 18-8.

"It's a strange feeling, almost a feeling of relief," said O'Sullivan, who celebrated by embracing his two-year-old daughter, Lily, and his son, Ronnie Jnr, who will be one next month. He dedicated his win to his children, who he says help provide him with the motivation and stability he requires to thrive.

"I think I've been consistent throughout the tournament and played really well in my semi-final," he said. "But actually I had a feeling of unease out there in the final. I just wanted to put on a good performance for the crowd. The expectation was that I would blow Ali away, but that didn't really happen."

The bounty he collected constituted more than the trophy, a winner's cheque of £250,000 and a share (with Carter) of the £157,000 pot for hitting a 147 in the tournament, as he also joined the club of players to have won more than two Crucible titles. Before yesterday it had only two members, Stephen Hendry (with seven titles) and Steve Davis (six). O'Sullivan had previously won in 2001 and 2004.

The distinction of becoming a three-times winner may not mean much to O'Sullivan. He likes winning as much as the next man, but baubles for their own sake have never seemed to be the point for him.

Hendry and Davis, at their peaks, lived their game. Consumed by it, they did little else in their glory years but practise and play. It defined them.

For O'Sullivan, snooker has not been the be-all and end-all. He has a hinterland, jagged as it has been at times. And he has also had a more pressing need, to win the ongoing battle for control of his own mind, prone as it is to darkness.

Carter, a fellow Essex boy but with little of his normal cheeky chap aura about him after an exhausting fortnight, looked dead on his feet and shot between the ears for much of yesterday. Damien Hirst was in the audience, and at times Carter was an embodied contradiction to the artist's notorious work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.

O'Sullivan was not required to replicate the awesome performance he produced in his semi-final demolition of Hendry. Carter made too many errors for that. O'Sullivan too made multiple mistakes yet Carter, a qualified pilot, could barely muster a taxi, let alone a take-off, to punish him.

Hirst, a snooker fan since boyhood, said over the weekend of O'Sullivan: "He's like Picasso. Or perhaps more like Francis Bacon, because what he does is instinctive. Anything done to the level Ronnie has taken it is art."

If the scrappy nature of much of the final was less Pablo and more Jackson Pollock, then O'Sullivan still showed glimpses of why, when on top form, he is regarded – not least by his peers – as better than anyone, by a country mile.

Returning to creative metaphors, there were passages of play when it was as though Carter was trying to construct a building from matchsticks. Slowly and carefully, but with a palpable sense of fear and fragility as he toiled, he would build. But what he made was not substantial enough to keep O'Sullivan at bay.

Carter would err and his hut would crumble. And Ronnie would open his own bag of matchsticks, chuck them on the floor, and – hey presto! – the Eiffel Tower. And this without his "A" game. Or his "B" game, for long spells.

The day's opening frame was a classic example, Carter hitting a 40 break where the final black jumped a good six inches in the air after hitting the jaws. It still went down, but it was not a sign of improved luck and his run ended there. O'Sullivan nipped in for a 24 but then missed a tricky red along the rail.

Carter had an opportunity on a plate but he scored just eight points before missing a straightforward red to the middle pocket. O'Sullivan strolled back in with a 52 for the frame and a 12-5 lead.

There were no centuries yesterday afternoon, and two of the biggest breaks – an 84 in the match's 21st frame and a 71 in the 23rd – were by Carter. O'Sullivan hit a 71 in the 20th frame and nothing bigger afterwards.

He needed only two evening frames to wrap things up, first with a 69 break, then with breaks of 34 and 28 to cross the line.

World Snooker Championship (Sheffield) Final: R O'Sullivan beat A Carter 18-8. Frame scores: 81-56, 127-0, 99-4, 0-104, 86-4, 62-76, 65-18, 73-0, 78-0, 36-60, 86-8, 28-93, 45-80, 126-0, 77-32, 110-5, 76-48, 74-0, 25-64, 85-0, 0-84, 62-42, 1-89, 72-39, 73-32, 62-16.