Ronnie O'Sullivan is still the best snooker player in the world. Photo: Getty Images/Oli Scarff
When Ronnie O'Sullivan became the oldest player ever to win the British Snooker Championship. Exactly 30 years after he became the youngest champion in the same competition, the tournament has rightly been hailed as one of the most remarkable examples of longevity in world sport. Thirty years at the top, three decades of brilliance and excitement, half a lifetime of triumph: what a remarkable performer O'Sullivan is.
But his magnificent victory came with a significant caveat, a detail that had long troubled O'Sullivan himself: who else was there? Whose breath does the great man feel on the collar of his dress shirt? Where exactly will the next generation of talent push him aside? The fact is that snooker is increasingly becoming an old man's game. And Ronnie is simply the best boy in the world.
When O'Sullivan won his first British title as a fiery teenager, the thought of the 48-year-old going after big prizes was fantastic. But O'Sullivan isn't the only one flying the middle-aged flag. Of the current top 10, he, Mark Selby, Mark Williams, Neil Robertson, John Higgins and Shaun Murphy are in their forties, and three of the other four are in their thirties. Luca Brecel, 28, is the youngest.
Luca Brecel, 28, is the youngest player in the top ten snooker players. Photo: Getty Images/George Tree
Of course, snooker is a game that values experience above all qualities. It takes time to master the table, understand the processes, and develop enough mental strength to sit in the corner and watch your opponent make a 100-point break rather than just give up. But for just one man in his twenties, let alone his teens, getting into the top ten is quite an indictment.
In a new documentary about O'Sullivan, he expresses concern about the lack of young talent in his sport. This is not his cliché arrogance, not what it was in my days when he was mourning an aging performer. He's too shrewd an analyst for that. No, it's a genuine concern about what will happen to the game he loves when his generation eventually tires of the relentless grind of the track. Although at this rate, given the lack of competition, most of them could still win titles in their seventies.
This is not the case in other sports. True, Tiger Woods won the Masters at Augusta in 2019, 22 years after first donning the green jacket. But this was an outstanding one-off. He may have won on a field of real depth, but he hasn't been able to produce anything close to that level of play since. Meanwhile, the golf production line coming out of the American college system is becoming more resilient. Every year, young contenders competing for majors are becoming stronger.
Darts, snooker's sister sport, has youth everywhere. Not least at the World Championships at Ally Pally this month, where 16-year-old Luke Littler is not just there to take stock.
But finding a place to play darts is not difficult. In snooker the problem is the numbers. To develop skill, you need to have a lot of people involved in the game. It also requires the game to be attractive enough to entice those with talent to care. When O'Sullivan was a boy, during school holidays his father would leave him for the day at the local snooker club, where he would play for hours. For him, snooker was about caring for children. This will not happen today, largely because there are very few snooker clubs left in the country. Almost all of them closed about ten years ago, unable to attract customers after the smoking ban was introduced. A teenager's best chance of hitting the ball on the table is if his family has a pool table at home. And how many homes in Britain have one on hand?
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association insists that China is the future, and that its huge popularity there will inevitably lead to a host of challengers. Except they've been playing snooker in China for decades and they don't have anyone in the top ten. The highest rating is Ding Junhui, he is 12 years old. And, at 36, he doesn't talk much about the future.
The silver lining in this story of rapid decline is that we will still be able to watch O'Sullivan compete for big titles. In fact, things are going well: he can remain at the top for another 30 years.
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