Ronnie O'Sullivan: The Rocket reveals recent doubts over 2026 World Snooker Championship participation prior to World Open
Ronnie O'Sullivan has opened up about his form this season after he reached the final of the World Open; O'Sullivan was beaten by Thailand's Thepchaiya Un-Nooh who made a 147 in the final; next for O'Sullivan is the World Snooker Championship next month
Last Updated: 23/03/26 11:14am
Ronnie O'Sullivan has revealed he was "probably" not going to enter this year's World Snooker Championship prior to his impressive run to Sunday's final at the World Open.
O'Sullivan has played just one tournament in the United Kingdom this season to prioritise the events in Asia and has largely struggled when he has competed - dropping to 10th in the World Snooker Tour rankings.
He made the final of August's Saudi Arabia Masters but suffered successive early exits, including a first-round defeat at the UK Championship in November, then withdrew from the Masters in London in January.
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The 50-year-old failed to win more than one match at the German Masters and World Grand Prix, so was not expected to be competitive at last week's World Open.
However, he showed some of his best snooker, including a historic 153 break against Ryan Day in the quarter-finals, and was only beaten in the final by an incredible performance by Thailand's Thepchaiya Un-Nooh.
"I can only take one day, one week at a time. I can't look any further than a week at the moment, with my career," said O'Sullivan.
"I've not been playing for a reason, just because I haven't had a game good enough to compete. So I've been trying to find that on the practice table and hopefully bring it to the match table.
"I've had quite a good year, really. I felt like I played really quite good at the start of the season, better than I was, and then I had a dip for a couple of months. January and February wasn't good and I thought 'here we go,' but I've managed to pull it back a little bit.
"We'll just see how it goes. I wasn't even going to play in the World Championship 10 days ago because I was too scared. I felt like I would embarrass myself. But now I feel I probably will go, because I feel like I might pot a few balls. It's not great, I'm not in a great, great place with it, but I'm better than I was maybe two weeks ago."
O'Sullivan last won the World Championship in 2022 and is still looking to surpass Stephen Hendry to a record-breaking eighth Crucible title.
'The Rocket' will not play any other televised tournaments before the World Championship in Sheffield on April 18 to May 4 but is "not getting too excited or too down" about his performance in China.
"Everyone's played okay against me this week, so my game is good enough to beat players playing okay," said O'Sullivan.
"I just can't get to the potting angle of certain shots, I can play maybe 60-70 per cent of shots comfortably, but there's other shots I just don't have in my locker. When someone plays like that, I'm just one-dimensional, really. It limits what I can do and the amount of pressure I can put on my opponent. I just have to accept that's how it is.
"On the whole I'm in a much better place now that I was in the last three years and I was two weeks ago. But it could easily fall apart and be in a bad place again soon. I'm just taking each day and week as it comes."
