Players Championship 2021 - Ronnie O'Sullivan looking to avoid 'having wars and tough matches'
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Published 26/02/2021 at 22:47 GMT
Ronnie O'Sullivan says he wants to avoid getting into attritional battles after being forced to come from a 3-0 deficit to beat Barry Hawkins in the Players Championship semi-final. The result puts him in his 57th ranking event final, equalling Stephen Hendry's long-standing record.
Ronnie O'Sullivan
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Ronnie O'Sullivan has admitted that he was not quite on his game during his 6-4 Players Championship semi-final victory over Barry Hawkins on Friday.
Hawkins raced into a 3-0 lead after a start to the match was defined by misses from both players, before five straight frames put the Rocket into the lead.
Hawkins made it 5-4 before O'Sullivan edged an epic frame, which was some way from his fine and quickfire win over Jack Lisowski on Thursday.
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"I dunno.. waiting around all day, it just feels like forever," the world champion told ITV4 after the victory was sealed.
"And you think 'I've been waiting around, I'm probably going to play useless tonight'. You have all those thoughts running through your head. It was worth the wait but if you start struggling, it's like you've wasted a day.
"It was just a struggle at the start. I had some chances. Barry played well - credit to Barry and I just had to hang in there. I played alright after the interval. I just kept thinking that something was going to go wrong. Even at the end I thought I was going to miss something. I'm getting really tight at the end, twitching. Horrendous, horrendous!
"[Hawkins] is a class act. He's a fantastic player. I just had to grind him and stay in there and see what happened. Keep going.
I don't want to be having wars and tough matches. I want to go and play half decent. If I win, great, if I don't, it's not the end of the world. Nice if you do.
"I was watching [Mark] Selby and [John] Higgins and I struggled to watch that because that's not the way I want to play snooker. I haven't got the stamina or energy to want to tough those games out and it felt a bit like that tonight.
"When you just want to go out and enjoy it and the result becomes secondary, you think, 'Why am I putting myself through the grinder here?'. I was feeling it.
"I'm just pleased I've got a day off now. The nine-mile run this morning might have had an effect. I don't know. I'm not going to stop. It's the best thing in my life at the moment."
O'Sullivan also admitted that he had no preference on playing without fans and that he had become accustomed to playing in empty arenas.
"Sometimes you think you miss the crowd and sometimes you think it's actually quite nice because you don't get mad.
"You can get in and out of the venue and that's really nice. It's a tough one. I've got used to playing without crowds."
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