2024-03-06 FrankReport
The first Riyadh Masters is underway, 7-time world champion O'Sullivan played a gallop in the 1/4 finals, he hit 3 consecutive shots to break 100 and 82 points with a thunderous gale, so as to defeat his old rival Higgins 4-0, after winning Higgins, O'Sullivan has reached the semifinals for the sixth time that season, and the 48-year-old O'Sullivan has won 4 championships so far in the 2023 2024 season (two invitational tournaments: Shanghai Masters, Masters; Two ranking tournaments: British Championship, World Grand Prix), and the prize money has also accumulated to 891,500 pounds in a single season, and if O'Sullivan can beat Trump in the semi-finals, his single-season prize money will exceed 1 million pounds by then.
The host does not seem to shy away from O'Sullivan's fact that he has always promoted high prize money events and participated in merit-based competitions, and the host first asked O'Sullivan: "Is the high prize money the reason and motivation for you to participate in the current Riyadh Masters?" ”。
The prize money for the winner of the Riyadh Masters was as high as 250,000 pounds (on par with the British Championship and the Masters), and in addition to the total prize money of 785,000 pounds, there was also a huge prize "Golden Ball 167", in which there will be a separate "Golden Ball 167" plan: if a player can first hit a perfect score of 147, and then hit a "Golden Ball" worth 20 points to get a total score of 167, an additional $500,000 will be awarded.
No, the high prize money is not the main reason for me to participate", O'Sullivan replied: "If I like a certain event, I will enjoy the game and make myself happy, and the prize money may be an extra bonus for me".
O'Sullivan was very proud of his powerful performance in the 1/4 final victory over "old enemy" Higgins: "It's been a long time since I've been able to play with this kind of pure momentum, and I've found my real touch in recent practice, in fact, my performance in the first two seasons was so "unbearable".
"But your performance in the last two seasons actually seems to be inevitable," the host quipped. In May 2022, O'Sullivan won his seventh World Championship title at the age of 48 years and 148 days, equalling Hendry's record of seven World Championships and becoming the oldest candidate to win the World Championships so far.
O'Sullivan continued: "Actually, participating in competitions is sometimes a bad thing for me at the moment, because I love life so much, I like fitness and food, or watching movies at home, I will arrange a more reasonable plan for my own life, so I really don't care about ** gram now, for professional players, is it a little embarrassing? But Saudi Arabia is where I love and I'm really happy to be able to play here."
The semi-final between O'Sullivan and Trump will be played at 00:00 on March 7, the 33rd meeting between the two sides so far, with the most recent match between the two sides being the World Grand Prix final in January this year, when O'Sullivan defeated Trump 10-7.