I'm not the best snooker player ever - O'Sullivan

Ronnie O'Sullivan won the World Snooker Championship in 2001, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2020 and 2022

Seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan does not think he is the greatest snooker player of all time, even as he bids for a record-breaking eighth Crucible title.

O’Sullivan, 48, begins his first-round match against 22-year-old Welsh qualifier Jackson Page on Wednesday (14:30 BST), with the second session on Thursday afternoon.

Another world title would move O’Sullivan one clear of Stephen Hendry’s seven Crucible successes in the 1990s.

O’Sullivan has already won the other two events in snooker’s Triple Crown – the UK Championship and the Masters – this season, the eighth time he has lifted each trophy, more than any other player.

Asked if he considered himself as the best ever, O’Sullivan said: “I don’t regard myself as the greatest. I’m one of them, maybe. You’ve got Hendry, [six-time world champion Steve] Davis, and my hat’s in the ring with them. I’ve had a different career to them. They did it over a ten-year period, whereas I’ve sort of gone off track, got myself together, back off track, then got myself back together.

“I’ve had to go on longer to get what I’ve got. I was a bit all over the show at times with stuff going on off the table and that can affect how you perform on it. Hendry and Davis pretty much had everything fitted around them to be focused on snooker and I didn’t have that.”

Ronnie O'Sullivan with the Masters trophy in January. He is aiming to win snooker's triple crown of UK Championship, Masters and World Championship in the same season for the first time.

'When you get there, you see it as an anti-climax'

O’Sullivan won his first world title at the age of 25 in 2001, before further successes in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2020 and 2022, when he became the oldest world champion at the age of 46.

But he has been in great form in 2023-24 and comes into the event as world number one.

He said when he was younger he wanted to be seen as the best and added: “As a kid I would have been desperate to be up there with those guys. But when you get there you see it as a bit of an anti-climax and it’s not as great as you thought it would be.

“By then you’re so far in, it’s too late to back out and live it all again. You go ‘I’ve got what I’ve got’ and you take the other benefits of it.”

As well as his record eight wins in the non-ranking Masters, O’Sullivan has also won 41 ranking titles in his 32-year professional career.

That leading total is five clear of Hendry’s 36, with four-time world champion John Higgins on 31, Davis and Judd Trump on 28 and Mark Williams on 26.

Six of the 16 seeds have been eliminated inside the first four days of the tournament

O’Sullivan, who has previously stated he would quit the sport only to change his mind and is now selective about which events he plays, said he could be playing for another five to 10 years.

“I love playing. I get to travel pretty much wherever I want to go to play snooker and take time off when I want to,” added O’Sullivan. “I’m my own boss, and they’re the most important things.

“You want to win because competitiveness has been in me. I have to have that approach no matter what. Whether that makes me the greatest or not, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.”

This month O’Sullivan agreed a three-year ambassadorial deal with the World Snooker Tour (WST) and Riyadh Season. Part of that contract will involve him mentoring aspiring players in the Middle East as well as a commitment to play in every WST event in Saudi Arabia.

“Someone’s going to have to do phenomenally well to get my records,” said O’Sullivan. “It’s going to be hard to catch those records now. My ranking events [total] is beatable. But the major titles - UKs, Masters and Worlds - that will be hard to get to.

“I’m pretty cool with what I’ve done, but I’d like to win more though.”