Ronnie and the “old, silver lady”: O’Sullivan and the World Cup trophy
Image: dpa
Genius, maestro, megastar: billiards artist Ronnie O’Sullivan had to go through many depths at the World Cup before he was allowed to kiss the “old, silver lady” again. Now he’s chasing another record.
DThe very last ball he would have liked to have sunk, for the gallery; For the first time there were spectators in the stands. But now his queue failed him as if five matches in 13 days and a total of 116 completed sets (frames) were enough. Ronald Antonio O’Sullivan scraped past the white ball on the last stroke, the black remained untouched. The only thing that could have comforted the player: he no longer needed all of this to win the 90th World Cup game of his memorable career in snooker.
The embarrassing and the perfect are close together in the most British of all billiards. And who knows that better than the veteran who reports the current score with his grimaces? In the past 28 years hardly anyone has explored the extremes of the game – as well as those of life – as intensively as O’Sullivan. But on Sunday evening there was also a bigger reward. The man from the West Midlands, whom everyone calls “Ronnie”, was allowed to kiss “this old, silver lady” who had waited seven years for him, as the emcee at the Crucible Theater in Sheffield smugly put it.
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