Ronnie O’Sullivan can see himself retiring from snooker in 2028 after taking advice from fellow legends Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry.
The Rocket is into the quarter-finals of the Wuhan Open this week, still winning matches at 50 years old, but increasingly frustrated with his own performances.
The seven-time world champion has beaten Ashley Carty, Yao Pengcheng and Stephen Maguire in Wuhan, but does not have high hopes of continuing that run when he meets Mark Selby in the last eight.
Asked if he could win the tournament this week, O’Sullivan told a post-match press conference: ‘No. Absolutely no chance. I was happy to win a match. When I won two matches I was over the moon. To win three, for me, was a miracle at the moment. I’ve probably gone as far as I can go.
‘If anybody plays well against me, they win, it doesn’t matter where they’re ranked. If they play poorly then I have a chance, but I don’t expect anyone from now to play poorly.
‘My game is now very, very poor. I’m not playing to a good enough level. My technique is so rubbish I don’t have a clue where the balls are going, it’s like hit and hope snooker. I’m delighted to have won three matches, I can’t believe it really.
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‘I just hope for some improvement in the future. I’m playing more for the future, to hopefully find something.’
Having just beaten Maguire 5-2 with two centuries along the way, O’Sullivan was asked if he was just being modest, but said he is quite the opposite.
‘No, I’m definitely not modest,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling the truth. I have very, very bad technical issues. I don’t even know where the balls are going. I know they go in, but I don’t even know. I can’t explain it.’
O’Sullivan turns 51 in December and feels he has been struggling for form and comfort at the table for at least three years.
He says he has spoken to Hendry and Davis about the latter stages of their careers and does not want to do as they did.
‘I asked Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis, I spoke to them a couple of times and they said they probably played 10 years longer than they should have done,’ said the Rocket. ‘Because you always have this feeling, I want to play like I used to, because it’s a nice feeling.
‘I’m not going to waste 10 years. I’ve wasted three or four, in my opinion, three or four years where it’s been not great.
‘I’ll give myself another year-and-a-half, to see if I can find something. If I can’t I think it’s good to draw a line under it and move on to other things that are more suitable to me.’
Davis did keep playing for quite a while after his best, retiring in 2016, six years after his last Crucible appearance and 19 years after his last major title at the 1997 Masters.
Hendry was still a force when he retired in 2012, hanging up his cue immediately after a quarter-final defeat at the World Championship, having made a 147 in that event.
However, it was seven years after his last ranking title, which came at the 2005 Malta Cup.
O’Sullivan’s last ranking title came in January 2024 and he says he has little hope of regaining the form that could see him add to his tally of 41 triumphs.
‘I don’t really have much hope to regain the level I was at before,’ he said. ‘I know I can play that well but when you have really bad technical issues, if you can fix the obviously I’d be much more optimistic about the future, but I just don’t think they are able to be fixed, especially at this stage of my career.
‘Maybe 10-15 years ago I could have had the time to do it. I just don’t have the time to see it through, maybe. I give myself 18 months, until the end of the 2028 World Championship to see if I can get somewhere back to how I used to hit the ball.
‘If I can hit the ball half decent then I can still win tournaments. But as it stands it’s pretty ugly out there for me and maybe ugly for you guys to watch me play. That’s where I’m at with it, I’ve always been a bit of a realist.’
O’Sullivan takes on Selby at 7am UK time on Thursday and will be up against it as the Jester is coming off winning the China Open earlier this month.
Elsewhere in the last eight Judd Trump takes on Chang Bingyu, while the final two quarter-finals will be determined on Wednesday afternoon.