More Sports Defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan (WS-3) has in the English Preston for the semi-finals of the Players Championship snooker placed. In a titanic battle between a quintuple and a quadruple world champion retired the 43-year-old Englishman his Scottish peer John Higgins (WS-4) 6-4.
O’sullivan took immediately the lead, but could only be after breaks of 101 and 92 in the fifth and sixth game of more than one frame ahead (4-2). In the eighth game potte “The Rocket” is also a 116 break away, the 997ste century in his career. With breaks of 96, 61 and 65 clutching Higgins to 5-4, but in the tenth frame, he had to after a tactical game, the head to bend. O’sullivan made it with a 53 break.
It was the 68th confrontation between two of the best players in the history. 36 times won the O’Sullivan, 29 time, Higgins, in the Premier League ended it three times in a tie. With 68 mutual duels since 1994, matched O’sullivan and Higgins set a record of Steve Davis and Jimmy White. That snookerlegendes were between 1979 and 2010 also 68 times against each other.
To a place in the final gives O’sullivan tomorrow night, the Noor-Irishman Mark Allen (WS-6) party. Judd Trump (WS-5), and the Australian Neil Robertson (WS-8) play tonight in the other semi-final (best of 11). The final is Sunday to a best of 19 played. The winner puts out 125,000 pounds (145.000 euros) in the bag, the runner-up to 50,000 pounds (58.000 euro).
Higgins, in the eighth-finals with 6-4 too strong for the triple world champion Mark Selby (WS-1), could never be places for the semi-finals of the tournament with the best sixteen players in the world over one season. Only once before kicking his way to the quarter-finals, five times he went in the first round.
