Interview: Ronnie O`Sullivan

April 20: Perhaps the only man in sport to psyche himself down before a big one, misery has been Ronnie`s biggest opponent, even in the early days as an Essex prodigy.

By Guardian Newspapers, 4/20/2002

If the current world snooker champion were a footballer he would cause problems to those inventing terrace chants. Because to suggest there is only one Ronnie O''Sullivan would be to come out short in the arithmetic. Indeed were the BBC ever to recognise O`Sullivan`s talents with its annual gong, it would be obliged to rename it the Sports Split-Personality of the Year.

In the light, bright, sunlit corner of O''Sullivan''s constant mental battle is the rocket-powered prodigy who stormed the world rankings while still a teenager, the cheery, cheeky Essex lad. In the shadowy, brooding, disturbed corner is Down Ron, the depressive who sinks deep and dark, at times losing the will to live, never mind pick up a cue.

"I don''t mind if I never see another snooker table in my life, the game is making me miserable," he said after winning at the Crucible last year. So the big question is: which Ronnie will turn up at 10am today to take on Drew Henry in defenceof the trophy he won so brilliantly 12 months ago? Rocket Ron or Ronnie the Gloom-meister?

On the day we meet O`Sullivan is up: cheerful, relaxed and determined not to head back to the place that scares him.

"I`m very well, thanks," he says, in a tone which suggests he is not merely responding politely to a stock inquiry. For the best player in the world, "well" is not a word he bandies lightly. "Yeah, I''m all right at this moment. I`ve got to think about my health. And the most important thing is that I''m happy. If I`m happy, I`m well."

He certainly looks happy, if a little odd, after an episode with a barber which has left him sporting what would no doubt be described on the fashion pages as an asymmetrical buzz cut which, with its one-sided plume, gives him the appearance of someone who has spent too long in a wind tunnel. He is back practising in the Ilford club where he first held a cue, lining up balls in a crucifix shape and splatting them into pockets with impatient haste. In a corner of the club hangs his dinner jacket, which he has just removed after a lengthy photo session for a lads` mag.

"Cor, some of the questions they asked me," he says, repairing to a side room with a jug of water and a packet of cigarettes for this interview. "All about sex they was. Sex this, sex that. Have you ever had it over a snooker table? I mean, blimey."

Well has he?

"What?"

Over a snooker table?

"Nice try," he says, grinning.

It was in the Ilford club that it all started for O''Sullivan. Word was soon out around snooker`s golden triangle - the block of suburban Essex bordered by Ilford, Romford and Basildon - that there was a prodigy on the loose, a kid beating allcomers even though he was barely big enough to see over the top of the table.

"I was lucky," he says. "We had all the top amateurs down here; we''d all meet, it`s where you got competition-hardened. That`s why I come down here. I knew that if I wanted to get good, I had to play and beat the fellas here. Me dad would pick me up from school, bring me down here and I''d play non-stop. I''d have played all night if dad had let me. In fact he didn''t want me being down here all hours, so I got me own room built on the house with me own table and I could practise there."


And there he would spend hours honing the most natural talent this side of Alex Higgins into a well-oiled piece of machinery. "I just loved the game," he says. "Going home with trophies, cheques; that was the thrill. It was about going into a tournament with maybe 320 players and you being the winner, then picking up Snooker magazine maybe a month later and seeing your name there. I hated losing, though. I could go home after losing a final, wake up the next morning and still be gutted. God I was a bad loser. The worst."

Even in those early days, then, there were hints of what was to come. And as O''Sullivan grew older, the insouciance began to disappear and insecurity preyed on him. So he practised more and more. Some days he would be on the table for 20 hours, then go to bed sick with guilt that he had not spent the other four at work.

"Once it becomes an obsession it can isolate you," he says. "And once you get isolated you become miserable. I need to be aware of that. I still get into that pattern sometimes but now at least I know there`s a way out. I`ve got to accept that, if I am going to stay well, there''s got to be times in the season when I''m just going to participate and not beat myself up if I don''t win. I don`t like just turning up but sometimes I`ll have to do that to keep myself well. Otherwise I`ll tear the arse out of it."

Does that imply he has discovered the pain-free path to defeat?

"Nah," he says. "I still hate losing. Always been a crap loser. And I`ll know that going out in the first round to a qualifier will feel like the worst thing in the world. But to be honest, if that`s the worst thing in the world, then your world ain''t a bad one."

Nevertheless the look on O''Sullivan''s face when he did exactly that and lost in the first round of the Scottish Open a couple of days after we met suggests such a philosophy is easier said than done.

But the bizarre thing about the champion is this: even if his premature departure from the last warm-up tournament before the big one does send him sliding into depression, it does not necessarily mean he will play badly. After all it was Down Ron who won the world title last year, playing some of the most dazzling snooker ever seen at Sheffield.

"Yeah, it`s odd," he says. "Sometimes I`ve gone into a tournament feeling good and expecting great things of myself and I''ve done nothing. Others, like last year`s worlds, I`ve been feeling like I never want to see another table again, been right down in the dumps, and I''ve gone and won it."

If there is a correlation between gloom and magnificent winning snooker, there must be a temptation to find a way into depression. Could he see himself becoming the only sportsman in the world to psyche himself down before the big one?

"No, no, I don''t want ever to be there again," he says. "You never know what will happen till you hit the table. If it clicks, it clicks."

But has it become, perhaps, a bit of a trick this world weariness, an attempt to unsettle his opponents? "Nah, definitely not," he says. "I wish there was some kind of strategy. I try to be as honest as I can with my opponent. If I go out there and we''re chatting away and I say I''m feeling miserable, to be honest I don`t think I can pot a ball, I say it because that''s the way I feel, not to try and undermine him." Besides, he adds, there is no point trying to predict how he will feel when he wakes up on the morning of a tournament.

"I tried a sports psychologist once and I never really got much from it. It`s like superstition. I try not to get superstitious. Because where do you go if you get a routine which you had when you win and then you lose doing it? You end up concentrating so much on your preparation for your superstition, you end up not concentrating on your game. My attitude is go out there and, if you`re on, you`re on; if you`re off, you`re off; and there''s not a lot you can do about it."

All of which has led the champion to prepare for his defence in a most idiosyncratic way. "I''ve done a bit of practice but not as much as I should have done, definitely," he says. "The thing is, I`ll only do as much as makes me happy. If going near the table makes me miserable, then I stay away."

Instead, he says, he has been spending time with his mum, playing a bit of football and avoiding golf, once his second love. "I`ve got to keep myself away from anything to do with snooker and golf is very similar to snooker."

Similar to snooker?

"Yeah, it`s a skill sport," he says. "It`s about angles and touch and putting balls in holes. But whatever I play, I like to win and obviously I`m not as good at golf as I am at snooker and I become obsessed and drive myself nuts. So, even though golf might be a nice social thing for some people, I can`t use it like that. No, I go down the gym, spend time with the family, I`m in vesting in a lot of property, so I`m looking at places. And I`m running. Went out this morning, did 10k. I`m getting quicker all the time. I`m going out this afternoon and all."
listened all night to every news bulletin, just to hear them words: Ronnie O''Sullivan, champion
Which sounds as if he is getting obsessed. "Yeah," he laughs. "But at least it will get me fit."
He has also, he says, been visiting his father, Ronnie senior, who remains in prison, serving a life sentence for murder.
"Dad heard about me winning last year on the radio," he says. "He could''ve had a telly in his cell but, since he''s never had a telly before to watch me, he didn''t want to risk it in case it put the kibosh on it. He said he of the world."

Return to the main page
Interviews with Ronnie O`Sullivan
Plyer`s biography
Write to me