Ronnie O’Sullivan could potentially miss out on a £790,000 ($1million) prize before he even steps up to the table at the Riyadh Season Snooker Championship. The hefty reward is up for grabs for the first player to achieve a maximum break of 167.
Last year, the Saudi tournament introduced a new ‘golden ball’ worth 20 points, raising the traditional maximum break score from 147 to 167. The first player to pot the maximum break last year pocketed around £393k ($500k).
This year, the prize money has been doubled after no one managed to achieve this feat in the competition’s inaugural edition last year. John Higgins came closest, potting 15 reds and 15 breaks, but missed an extremely difficult yellow.
All of O’Sullivan’s competitors will have the opportunity to complete the maximum break before he takes part in the tournament. The Rocket is scheduled to play his first match last, with players like Ding Junhui, Luca Brecel, Shaun Murphy, Kyren Wilson, Judd Trump and Mark Selby all playing before him.
The 49 year old’s first match will be on Thursday, against the winner of Murphy’s match against either Ding or local star Abdulraouf Sayegh. There is a chance that the maximum break will already have been scored by the time fans see O’Sullivan play for the first time, reports the Express.
Sayegh has been confirmed as one of the Saudi wildcards to compete alongside the top 10 ranked snooker players in this unique non-ranking event. The winner is set to collect a whopping £250,000 prize money—a sum that even surpasses the £500k awarded to Kyren Wilson for his World Snooker Championship victory earlier in the year.
In other news, Ronnie O’Sullivan, seven-time world champion, has scaled back on his end-of-year schedule, deciding to pull out of the Scottish Open just a day before facing Xing Zihao. Following his UK Championship exit where he was defeated by Barry Hawkins, O’Sullivan shared his admiration for China with the World Snooker Tour, saying: “I always tell people you have to come to China. For me, it’s the greatest place on Earth.”
His passion didn’t stop there; he added fervently to anyone listening, “I would just recommend anybody to just come to China. It blows me away. Every city I come to in China … it’s like you’re in another world. It’s the best place in the world. There is no other place like China. Every city just has something amazing about it and Nanjing has a lot of history.”
View news Source: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/ronnie-osullivan-could-lose-out-30620958
