Dave Hendon's View on Players

Dave Hendon wrote:Love him or hate him – and plenty seem to do either – Ronnie O’Sullivan is snooker’s greatest gift.

He is the only player who can regularly command a full house and the only one outside of those associated with the ‘golden era’ of the 1980s who attracts the interest of the wider media.

At 34, O’Sullivan is approaching veteran status but it would take an extraordinary collapse in form to see him end the season much below where he is now.

Last season he won only one title, the Shanghai Masters. He was beaten by John Higgins in three other ranking events and by Mark Selby in the Masters final and World Championship quarter-finals. Shaun Murphy beat him in the Premier League final while the manner of his exit from the China Open was not exactly his finest hour.

Overall, this wasn’t a bad campaign but Ronnie is no longer world no.1, neither is he world champion.

His future fortunes may well depend on the extent to which he embraces the Barry Hearn revolution.

It was O’Sullivan who set the ball rolling at the 2009 Masters with his very public appeal for snooker to open itself up to entrepreneurship and shake some life into a sport may felt had gone stale.

O’Sullivan has a very good relationship with Hearn. He has said the promoter ‘was like a dad to me’ when he managed him as a teenager.

When Hearn called him a ‘miserable Bar Steward’ he took it as it was meant: as a bit of banter between a couple of mates.

The new formats for the World Open and Sky Shootout are likely to excite Ronnie more than the run of the mill ranking events he’s been playing in for nearly two decades. They will be something different, a new experience, something he usually likes.

He has already played in one Players Tour Championship event – although he hasn’t entered the second one – and has a full calendar of tournaments to keep him going if he wants them.

But analysing O’Sullivan is not a job I or most others are qualified to do. He remains a complex soul: a mass of contradictions who tests the patience even of those who idolise him.

His search for perfection on the table is fruitless. He will never find it, at least not over a sustained period.

Snooker, to put it crudely, is a bloody hard game and even a player blessed with the mercurial talents of O’Sullivan can’t win everything, neither can they play brilliantly all the time.

It seems that Ronnie’s performances these days depend largely on who he is playing.

Two of his best displays last season came against Mark Williams, first at the Masters and then at the World Championship. Williams is a player he grew up with and one who he greatly respects.

In both events he then lost to Selby, whose reliance on defence as well as attack – a perfectly reasonable approach – seems to frustrate him greatly.

I think most players would still regard O’Sullivan as the best player on the circuit. He probably wouldn’t and therein lies the central paradox of his career.

Everyone can see how frighteningly good he is apart from Ronnie O’Sullivan himself.

Maybe he’s right and we’re all wrong. Or maybe he should stop chasing perfection and just be satisfied with being, at his best, the best.

Dave Hendon wrote:FOCUS ON...NEIL ROBERTSON
New world champions have much to get used to.

There’s the higher profile, the increased expectation – from media, fans, fellow players and, perhaps most crucially, themselves – and a greater number of off table commitments.

Joe Johnson once told me that after he won the world title in 1986 he would have photographers waiting for him when he got off the plane on his holiday.

Snooker doesn’t command such an interest in the media now but Neil Robertson is still going to have to adjust to the various demands on his time and scrutiny of his performances.

You can just imagine some of the comments if he makes a bad start to the new season.

What will stand him in good stead is his inner steel, which he has demonstrated time and time again.

Robertson has appeared in five ranking tournament finals and won them all, an admirable record. The way to silence any doubters there may be is to keep on winning: no player can do more than that.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at a pro career while still very young, Robertson returned to the circuit in 2003, set up camp in Cambridge and has impressed ever since.

Winning the world title was reward for all the sacrifices he has made and will have to continue to make. Fatherhood complicates the issue too – albeit in a happy way – and it will be interesting to see what sort of Neil Robertson returns to the UK for the new campaign.

How hungry will he be for further silverware? How determined will he be to press on from this and cement a place among the all time greats?

Snooker has a low media profile in Australia but it has risen considerably since his Crucible triumph and he has been doing his his bit with media appearances. Fingers crossed it can translate into a professional event there.

Neil is good for the game. Having an Australian world champion is a boost to snooker’s global aspirations, he has a clean cut image and plays in an attractive way. He shows his personality in the arena and is honest and direct in media interviews. His charisma is real, not constructed.

His victory in Sheffield was partly overshadowed by the John Higgins scandal and what became a poor final but all that matters is that his name is on the one trophy that means more than all the rest put together.

It will always be there. He will always have the memories of his celebrations in the arena with his mother who had flown from the other side of the world to share the moment.

But it is to the future to which Robertson should now look.

Some world champions have enjoyed continual success in the season that followed their win – Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, Higgins and John Parrott being examples.

Others – Johnson, Peter Ebdon and Shaun Murphy – found it harder going.

Much will depend on how much time Robertson actually has to get his head down and work on his game. I’d imagine he hasn’t spent much – if any time – practising since winning the world title but any rustiness will soon be exposed when he returns to action.

Then there’s the question of what he himself is expecting to happen this year. What goals will he set himself – the top the rankings? To win a certain number of tournaments? To retain the world title?

It might be better not to set targets at all. Few wanted to draw him before, even fewer will want to do so now.

Robertson is a positive sort of guy and will almost certainly look not at the pitfalls and what can go wrong in his year as world champion but just revel in the experience of being introduced as such.

What better feeling can there be in snooker?

He may go on to win more world titles, he may never win another.

In the meantime, he should enjoy the feeling while it lasts.

Dave Hendon wrote:Ding Junhui’s season was one of much improvement after a couple of disappointing years.

Of the six world ranking titles contested he appeared in three finals, winning a gripping UK Championship battle against John Higgins.

However, the campaign ended in a second round defeat at the Crucible to Shaun Murphy. This in itself was no disgrace but Ding is still yet to appear in a World Championship quarter-final.

He did little wrong against an inspired Mark Williams in the second session of the China Open final and, from what I’m told, hardly made a mistake from 8-2 up to Murphy in the Wuxi Classic final, which he eventually lost 9-8.

Ding has defied the dire predictions that he had peaked as a teenager and would not settle down as a top player. It was easy – and forgivable – to expect much more of him considering his golden 18-month spell from March 2005 when he won the China Open, UK Championship and Northern Ireland Trophy.

Back then, he looked like a certain top four player and possible world champion. Neither of these has happened yet but, at 23, he still has plenty of time to add to his achievements.

Of course, he suffered that confidence-sapping drubbing to Ronnie O’Sullivan in the 2007 Masters final and had to deal with the expectations heaped on him by the largest country on the planet.

These have been eased by the emergence of Liang Wenbo, whose rise up the rankings may also have created a rivalry that has helped spur Ding on.

He seemed happier last season in general. Moving from his home to live in the UK was not easy but he appears to have settled now.

One change this season is his practice base. The World Snooker Academy is now a qualifying centre so Ding has had to find somewhere else, but I understand his manager is setting up a new facility in Sheffield so this won’t be such a seismic shift.

Ding starts the new season fifth in the rankings, his highest ever position. He started the campaign just gone struggling to stay in the top 16 so this represents a vast effort.

He remains a rather shy young man not entirely comfortable with the spotlight. People are made differently. It’s easy to say a sportsman should be this, that or the other but ultimately people are who they are.

Ding gets criticised because often in the arena he looks thoroughly fed up.

So what if he does? I’ve never understood the juvenile demand that players should ‘smile more.’ What if there’s nothing to smile about?

And how many top sportsmen or women go about with fixed rictus grins on their faces when they are trying to concentrate on playing their chosen game to the best of their ability?

He inevitably has people fussing around him trying to market him in a certain way or telling him how to behave. My advice is simple: let Ding be Ding.

Let him concentrate primarily on what he has loved doing since he first came across the game as a ten year-old on the table outside his family home: playing snooker.

This is what fascinates him. This is what inspires him. This is what he is really good at.

Dave Hendon wrote:This season is Stephen Hendry’s 26th as a professional and his 23rd in succession as a member of the elite top 16.

It could also be the campaign that tells us whether his career in the top flight is set to continue or whether his days are numbered.

There is certainly no disgrace in being ranked 11th at the age of 41 but I suspect Stephen doesn’t derive much pleasure from now being a member of the supporting cast after so many years in the starring role.

He is snooker’s greatest ever champion and, like all born winners, wants to keep on winning.

In fact, it’s now five years since his last ranking title and almost four since his last ranking final.

Hendry’s essential problem is that all of the players above him in the rankings have copied how he played in his heyday but they are now playing it better than him.

When Steve Davis began to drop down the list he changed his game and became much more tactical, happy to scrape wins rather than try and pot his opponents off the table.

Hendry has never been a fan of safety play and frames that get drawn out and is still playing the same game as he always did, just with less success.

I know he hates people saying he isn’t as good as he once was but the evidence of the last two years suggests that this is the case.

It is hard for any player to accept this but especially difficult for an all time great.

It took Davis a number of years to come to terms with the fact that Hendry had overtaken him as snooker’s dominant force. When he did he relaxed and did not put himself under pressure trying to force results.

And then, out of nowhere and with little personal expectation, he won the Wembley Masters in 1997.

Since then Davis has put together several memorable performances, defying Old Father Time. He reached the 2004 Welsh Open final, the 2005 UK Championship final and, of course, beat John Higgins in the second round of last season’s Betfred.com World Championship.

In the same tournament Hendry struggled past young Zhang Anda before suffering a heavy defeat to Mark Selby.

His aura of invincibility is now gone. His performances of late have even seen him dropped from the Premier League.

But I think it’s dangerous to write him off completely. Truly great players in any sport have a tendency to, as the old cliché puts it, roll back the years every now and again.

It’s entirely conceivable Hendry could win tournaments in the future but I don’t think he will until he accepts he is no longer as strong a player as he was at his remarkable peak.

What he needs is an injection of self belief. I don’t know if Hendry feels the new Players Tour Championship is beneath him but it is actually an ideal chance to rebuild confidence.

There’s nobody watching, if he loses he can point to the short format but it’s matches against good players and will toughen up his game more than by playing alone in his snooker room.

Furthermore, if he misses many more PTC events his ranking position will suffer and it may be that he will have to go to the Academy in Sheffield – to qualify for tournaments.

In such a scenario, Hendry may prefer a dignified retirement. If that happens he will hang up his cue safe in the knowledge that his career has been more successful than any other player in the modern age.

But I sense he isn’t ready to give up just yet.

Dave Hendon wrote:
One of the most welcome things to happen last season was the return to form of Mark Williams.

Having returned to the elite top 16 in 2009 he is now back in the top eight and has already won the campaign’s first PTC title.

Only a stellar Ronnie O’Sullivan performance could deny him a place in last season’s Wembley Masters final and it was another superb O’Sullivan display that cost him a place in the Crucible quarter-finals.

In between Williams reminded everyone just how good he can be by winning the China Open, his first ranking title since 2006.

The key to Mark’s success has always been his laid back attitude. He gives the impression that nothing much bothers him most of the time.

In his period in the doldrums he had various off table pressures that meant he was no longer happy-go-lucky.

There was also, perhaps subconsciously, the notion that after completing the grand slam of all four BBC tournaments and occupying the world no.1 position in 2003 he no longer had anything to achieve.

Williams won’t have enjoyed having to qualify during the 2008/09 season but in the long run it has done him good.

He also now has his own snooker club and seems to be back in the groove generally.

Time is against him. At 35 he is now considered to be on the back nine of his career but, as he proved last season, he is still capable of deadly performances.

His strength was always his single ball potting, forcing his way into frames. He can scrap it out and his temperament is rock solid. It makes for a highly effective game when it all comes together.

I spoke to Mark briefly at PTC 2 and he seems to be as enthusiastic as ever about his snooker. He was a big supporter of Barry Hearn prior to the EGM and is relishing the increased playing opportunities that are ahead of the players, not just this season but in the years to come.

Williams, at his best, was the sort of player you would pick to play a frame if your life depended on it.

Regardless of the problems he’s had in recent times, he is getting back to that sort of level and there’s no obvious reason why more silverware shouldn’t be heading his way this season.

Dave Hendon wrote:Shaun Murphy has been world champion, UK champion and is a player often tipped to win titles based on his professional approach to tournaments as well as his rock solid game.

All this said, it’s worth pointing out that he only has three ranking titles to his name.

I say ‘only’ – this is a little unfair. It’s not as if they come along every week. He has also won three invitation titles. Even so, it’s a lower return than might have been expected after Murphy’s sensational capture of the world title in 2005.

To come through the pack like he did was a surprise but that he would make it at the top level was not for anyone who had known Shaun since he was young.

His entire focus as a boy was to make it as a professional. When he first appeared at the Crucible he said it was his ambition to one day be mentioned in the same breath as Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry.

Some journalists – no doubt I was one of them – wondered if this teenager had ideas above his station. But although he hasn’t achieved the domination Davis and Hendry did in their respective heydays, Murphy is what all the many thousands of pros, wannabe pros and young amateurs have dreamt of being: world champion.

To produce the standard of snooker he did on the game’s greatest stage against much more experienced opponents was one of the great achievements of the last decade, indeed of any decade.

He lost 17-16 to Mark Selby in the semi-finals in 2007, 18-9 in the final to John Higgins in 2009 and 13-12 to Ali Carter in the quarter-finals last season.

I’d fancy Murphy to be there or there abouts at the Crucible for the next few years.

Last season, he dropped four places down the rankings to seventh.

In truth, though, there’s far too much focus on the rankings at the top end. What difference does it make whether a player is fifth or sixth or seventh? Who cares?

Of course, dropping out of the top four makes a difference in seedings but when the top players meet it’s all on the day. Murphy doesn’t suddenly become a heavy second favourite against, say, Neil Robertson just because he’s now below him on the list.

Dropping out of the top four may, however, be a psychological setback. Players want to keep on the up and up but Murphy has slipped back. The good news, though, is that with the new ranking system he can bounce back straightaway instead of having to wait a whole season.

And as he didn’t win a match in any of the 2008 Northern Ireland Trophy, Shanghai Masters and Grand Prix there won’t be many points to come off when the list is revised in October.

Murphy has always given the impression of being a wise head on young shoulders but off table pressures – the break up of his marriage and subsequent relocation to Sale – clearly had an impact on his form.

He isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (who is?) but from what I’ve seen he’s always been a good pro: signing autographs, chatting to fans, posing for photographs.

In his year as world champion he was always available for media interviews and willing to promote his sport.

There have been well documented (very well in some cases) incidents in the arena where his opponents have not always been enamoured by Murphy. He isn’t alone in this and, of course, there’s no taking back what has happened once it’s happened.

Some people still bang the drum that there are no ‘characters’ (without ever defining what they actually mean by that term) but I’d say Murphy is a fascinating character.

Socially, he is one of the easiest players to chat to. He’s friendly and laidback and yet seems to wind a lot of snooker fans up.

Perhaps they regard his persona is insincere. Knowing Shaun, I don’t believe it is but I also like a bit of tribalism in sport: heroes and villains, as in any drama, is what keeps people coming back for more.

Murphy turns 28 this year, not young in snooker terms but not old either.

The next five years or so is where you would expect him to enjoy the majority of his success.

He remains one of the few players in the game I would be wary of betting against but his consistency seems to have declined in the last couple of seasons – he has lost some matches in this period that few would have predicted – and that is what he will be looking to recapture in the new campaign.

That and titles: the ultimate measure of a snooker player.

Dave Hendon wrote:Mark Selby won one of the matches of last season when he once again demonstrated his ability to deal with pressure in high stakes situations.

Selby’s recovery from 9-6 down to beat Ronnie O’Sullivan 10-9 and land a second Wembley Masters title was proof of his big match temperament.

A second comeback against O’Sullivan in the Crucible quarter-finals a couple of months later further enhanced this reputation.

Selby’s problem isn’t the big occasions. Quite the opposite, in fact: he seems to struggle in earlier rounds, which helps to explain why, for a second successive season, he went down the rankings.

Two years ago the Leicester man was the world no.4. He slipped to seventh and is now ninth.

The new rankings system affords him the chance to rise up quicker than before but if he endures the same start to the current campaign as he did to the one just gone he’ll continue his slide.

Then again, here are the six players he lost to in ranking events last season: Stuart Bingham, Ken Doherty, O’Sullivan, John Higgins, Ding Junhui and Graeme Dott. No shame in any of those defeats.

Also, he suffered from the Bahrain Championship fiasco of 2008 but – and isn’t it funny how things turn out? – he will end up benefiting from it because when the points come to be dropped later in the year he won’t have any to lose.

But why is it he still only has one ranking title to his name? Well, the obvious reason is that there have been so few of late and the standard is such that winning one is an achievement in itself.

Even so, there is currently a gap between his reputation with his fellow players – they regard him as one of the very best of the current era – and his record of achievement in ranking events.

I’m certain this will change and it will probably change this season. I believe Selby is a good enough player to be world champion.

Furthermore, I don’t believe he merits the criticism he sometimes gets for being slow. He isn’t slow. If you think he is, dig out a video of some of snooker’s proper grinders from years gone by.

He was perfectly comfortable with the 25 second per shot time limit in the Premier League two years ago, where he reached the final, and was unlucky not to be invited back last season. He’s in it this year and must be a big favourite to reach the play-offs because, again, the tournament has a big match feel to it due to the crowds and general atmosphere.

Selby may have employed a tactical game to his benefit at times. So what? Why shouldn’t he? It’s a perfectly acceptable game plan to play to your own strengths rather than those of your opponent.

The point is, he can switch between attack and defence with deadly effect in a similar vein to Higgins.

His break-building skills are evident for all to see. He has twice compiled five centuries in a match at the Crucible. The only others players to do this more than once are Stephen Hendry, Higgins and O’Sullivan.

In winning the PTC event yesterday he made a total of eight century breaks.

Off table, Mark is a normal, down to earth guy without pretensions. As far as I’m aware he is obliging with fans when it comes to autographs and pictures.

He makes an effort to promote himself and is - unbelievably - the only top player who regularly writes a blog for his official website (although O'Sullivan has started one in Chinese for Sohu.com).

Like most players, Selby just wants to play and, despite all the ‘Jester from Leicester’ stuff, wants to win.

I’d be amazed if he wasn’t winning major silverware this season.

eirebilly wrote:Some good stuff there.

eirebilly wrote:I also honestly believe that Selby is good enough to be a World Champion at some stage.

eirebilly wrote:I just think that he has the game to win the big oe Sirius. He is a fighter and his day will come. I am not a huge fan of his but i do appreciate his style of play.