Ronnie O’Sullivan is often ‘misinterpreted’ and ‘has a heart of gold,’ says Graeme Dott, who hopes to see the Rocket back at the World Snooker Championship.
Whether O’Sullivan will play at the Crucible this year is yet to be seen as he has not played competitively since the Championship League in January, pulling out of a string of tournaments since then.
Frustrations boiled over at the Championship League, where he smashed his cue and left it in a bin in Leicester, before pulling out of the Masters shortly after.
He has not been seen at the table since, but having never missed a World Championship since his debut in 1993, it would be a major decision not to play in Sheffield.
Dott, who lost to the Rocket in the 2004 Crucible final but then beat him in the 2006 semis before lifting the famous trophy himself, hopes that O’Sullivan is getting himself into a good place mentally so he can perform in Sheffield.
‘I’ve not spoke to him but the guy must be struggling,’ Dott told Metro. ‘I know he’s got a love-hate relationship with snooker, but he does still love it.
‘He puts a lot of work in in practice so he obviously is struggling if he’s not playing. Probably the best thing he can do is what he is doing, just don’t play.
‘Hopefully he gets back to a better mental state so he can come back and play again.
‘He’s the box office name, he’s still the box office player, he’s probably still the best player. It’s certainly a better tournament with him in and it’s not quite the same when he’s not there.
‘I wish him nothing but the best and hopefully he’s back to feeling a bit better and he feels well enough to compete again.’
The Englishman and the Scot go a long way back, having first played each other professionally at the 1995 International Open.
Both have gone through their own battles with mental health, with Dott speaking openly about suffering with depression in the past.
The 47-year-old has also told the story of how O’Sullivan reached out to him when the Rocket heard that he was struggling, to offer help and advice.
Explaining the worst time of his struggles with depression in 2007, Dott said on This Sporting Life back in 2021: ‘Funnily enough I actually got a phone call, now I don’t really speak to him, at all. Even just now I don’t really speak to him but Ronnie phoned me and was asking, because Ronnie had been through it as well, he was asking how I was feeling and what I was doing and saying that was the same as what he was doing.
‘I thought it was really nice of him to phone, because he doesn’t really speak to me, it’s not as if we were mates. I kind of looked at him a different way after that. But it’s horrible [depression], horrible.’
Remembering that conversation now, Dott says it meant a lot to him: ‘Yeah it did because it’s not as if we were friends, it came completely out the blue, so it shows you what kind of guy he is.
‘He’s misinterpreted quite a lot, Ronnie, I think he’s got a heart of gold. Hopefully he can feel a bit better and he can play in the Worlds. It would be a much better tournament with him in it.’
The World Championship gets underway at the Crucible on April 19, with snooker fans across the globe hoping that O’Sullivan will choose to play.
Before then the qualifiers are played at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield, where Dott will be hoping to return to the Crucible for the first time since 2019.