At the 2023 ** Keying Championships, Zhou Yuelong's outstanding performance was eye-catching. He managed to win over Neil Robertson and Higgins in the quarterfinals. However, in the 1 4 finals, he faced world No. 1 O'Sullivan, and the situation was extremely difficult for him. Although O'Sullivan once led -1 and scored 125 points and 68 points in a row, a bizarre power outage followed. Zhou Yuelong seized the opportunity to launch a fierce counterattack, winning four games in a row and overtaking the score 5-4.
Although O'Sullivan pulled back a game in a desperate situation, Zhou Yuelong lost 6-5 in the end and failed to advance to the semifinals. Prior to the start of the British Championships, Zhou Yuelong was ranked only 26th in the world and started from the third round of qualifying. With back-to-back wins over Miah and Burns, he managed to reach the round of 32. In the first round, against Neil Robertson, who had defeated him 9-0 in the European Masters, Zhou Yuelong successfully achieved revenge and won 6-2. In the second round, he faced World Champion John Higgins again and successfully eliminated his opponent 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinals.
Successive defeats of bitter master Neil Robertson and idol Higgins mean a lot to Zhou Yuelong. Next, Zhou Yuelong faces an even stronger opponent - world No. 1 O'Sullivan!O'Sullivan previously showed strong strength with a 6-2 win over McGill and a 6-5 win over Milkins. In the history of the British Championships, O'Sullivan has won a total of 7 championships and is the 7-time champion of this event. In his career, O'Sullivan has won all 5 times against Zhou Yuelong, with a one-sided record, so he is generally favored to advance easily.
The game adopts a best-of-11 system and is divided into two halves. In the first half of the game, O'Sullivan quickly exerted his strength, and scored a high score of 125 points in the first game!In the second game, O'Sullivan broke 100 with a single stroke again and won 87-0, completely suppressing Zhou Yuelong from the game. Chinese star Zhou Yuelong suffered a twist and turn in the match with O'Sullivan. Despite scoring 14 points in the third game, O'Sullivan won three games in a row with a score of 59-14 and had a clear advantage.
Subsequently, Zhou Yuelong won the fourth game with difficulty, pulled back a game at 54-22, and chased the total game score to 1-3, retaining the hope of reversing and advancing for himself. However, O'Sullivan scored 60 points in the second half to win the fifth game 79-1 and extend the overall points lead to 4-1. Although Zhou Yuelong won 64-34 in the sixth game, chasing the total game score to 2-4 and biting O'Sullivan, the situation is not optimistic. In the seventh game, Zhou Yuelong scored 89 points in a single stroke to complete the reversal of the single game, chasing the total score to 3-4.
Immediately afterwards, Zhou Yuelong chased two games in a row and chased the total score to a 4-4 draw. In the end, in the tenth game, O'Sullivan saved the match point with 83-5, and Zhou Yuelong's conservative performance led to the game being killed with a score of 6-5 and missing the semifinals of this British Championship. It can be said that Zhou Yuelong missed the match point because he was too conservative and paid the price for it!