A Single Season Triple Crown is Now in Ronnie’s Sights
The 2023/24 Snooker season has entered its home straight. Judd Trump numerically leads the way with twelve of 17 ranking tournaments consigned to the history books. The 34-year-old has won the English and Northern Ireland Opens, the Wuhan Open and the German Masters during a busy campaign.
Ronnie O’Sullivan (left) is 3/1 to complete a same-season Triple Crown by taking the 2024 World Snooker Championship in May. With a fine record in the competition, Shaun Murphy (left) is 18/1 to claim his second world title. ©Getty
With an additional runner-up spot in the World Grand Prix and second place in the non-ranking Champion of Champions on his resume, in a typical season, the Bristolian would be the sport’s headline act and clear favourite to land May’s World Championship.
But 2023/24 has been no normal season. Seven-time World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan has played just five ranking events, winning two. Amongst that pair was the UK Championship – the second most significant event on the calendar and the first leg of Snooker’s Triple Crown. It is a title he has now taken a record eight times.
Two Gems, Now for the Crown Jewel
O’Sullivan’s season began with victory in the valuable – but non-ranking – Shanghai Masters. Following his UK Championship success at the start of December, the Rocket took January’s elite-field non-raking Masters for an eighth time. In doing so, he landed the second leg of snooker’s Triple Crown.
Now, all that is needed for O’Sullivan to complete the Triple Crown is to claim the World Championship. The sport’s biggest event begins in April, and O’Sullivan is chasing an eighth title. Snooker betting sites quote O’Sullivan on 3/1 to lift the prize and therein take the Triple Crown.
Eleven players have completed a career Triple Crown: Steve Davis, Terry Griffiths, Alex Higgins, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins, Mark Williams, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Neil Robertson, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy, and Judd Trump.
Only Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry and Mark Williams have won all three Triple Crown events in the same season. The feat has not been achieved since 2002/03 when Mark Williams scooped the ‘big three’ events.
Mapping Out a Route to the World’s
Seven days after O’Sullivan beat Ali Carter 10-7 in the Masters final, the legendary player landed the World Grand Prix. Beating Gary Wilson 5-1 in the quarter-finals, Ronnie accounted for Ding Junhui 6-1 in the semi-finals and came from 4-nil down to beat Judd Trump 10-7 in the final.
O’Sullivan has played just one match since. On January 23, in Barnsley, he beat Alfie Burden 5-3 in a qualifying match for the World Open. This competition, the fifteenth-ranking event on the snooker calendar, will take place in Yushan, China, between March 18 and 24.
Skipping the German Masters, O’Sullivan is scheduled to play next in the world-ranking BetVictor Welsh Open on February 12. He is also eligible for the next ranking event, the Players Championship (February 19-25), open to the top 16 players on the one-year ranking list.
Of other tournaments scheduled before the season concluding World Championship, Ronnie is unlikely to play in the Championship League (concluding on March 2). Always drawn to substantial prizemoney, he is sure to take up his invite – as a world top-eight player – to the inaugural World Masters of Snooker. The Saudi Arabian event has a $1 million prize pool.
The penultimate ranking event of the 2023/24 season is the Tour Championship. Once again, with £150,000 going to the winner and only the world’s top 12 players invited to play – the top four proceed directly to the quarter-finals – O’Sullivan will likely take up this engagement.
Can the Rocket Reach New Heights?
O’Sullivan has had a remarkable season. In terms of victories, it has been his best since 2018/19. His stats are genuinely remarkable, they read: 34 matches played, 31 won. Three hundred and nineteen frames contested – 200 won. Nineteen percent of the frames he has won (38) have resulted in a century break.
But 2020/21 was a winless campaign for the legend, and his only visit to the winner’s rostrum during 2022/23 came in the non-ranking Champion of Champions. Between these seasons, Ronnie O’Sullivan landed the World Championship in 2020 and 2022.
In 2022, Ronnie O’Sullivan became the oldest world champion at 46 years and 148 days. The UK’s bookmakers’ odds suggest there is a 25 percent chance he will set the mark even higher in 2024. The Essex cue man’s current form indicates that the probability of World Championship victory number eight is greater than that.
Much depends on the form of his rivals when reigning champion Luca Brecel breaks off in the first World Championship game on April 20. Six other players are priced under 20/1 odds. Here, we will look at their results during the season and prospects of landing the big one.
Ronnie’s Rivals – A Form Guide
In betting order, Judd Trump (4/1), Mark Selby (7/1), Mark Allen (14/1), Neil Robertson (16/1), Shaun Murphy (18/1) and Luca Brecel (18/1) are considered the most likely players – behind Ronnie – to take the 2024 World Championship.
Judd Trump
Reigning World Champion Luca Brecel will be given an automatic number-one seeding in the 2024 competition. It will place him in the top bracket of the World Championship draw. Trump, the 2019 World Champion, is currently ranked number two in the world. This could be a significant handicap for him as O’Sullivan is ranked number 1.
Unless a highly-ranked player goes on an unprecedented win streak, O’Sullivan and Trump will be drawn together in the bottom bracket as the number two and three seeds. There will be no repeat of the 2022 World Championship final – won 18-13 by O’Sullivan over Trump.
Head-to-head, Ronnie and Judd have met 32 times. The scores are remarkably close: 17-15 in favour of the older player. However, Trump is enjoying his best season since 2019/20. In addition to his four ranking tournament victories, he has been a finalist in the European Masters, World Grand Prix and Champion of Champions.
Trump has played 65 matches this season, losing just nine times. He has not registered a 147 break this campaign, but, in recording 66-century breaks, he has produced 26 more 100-plus breaks than Kyren Wilson, who sits second on the 2023/24 century stats.
Mark Selby
Twenty-two-time ranking winner Mark Selby appears short in the betting based on his 2023/24 performances. His best result was a final table appearance in October’s British Open, where he was beaten 10-7 by Mark Williams. Overall, Selby has lost 17 of the 54 matches he has played this season.
But the ‘Jester From Leicester’ is still world-ranked number five, and his best form always comes in long format matches – notably the World Championship, which he has won four times and reached two additional finals (2007 and 2023).
The suspicion is his price is based on the theory he will be seeded to play from the opposite end of the draw than Trump and O’Sullivan. Traditionally peaking in the spring, Selby has never been one to write off in ‘the big one’.
Mark Allen
The Northern Irishman is becoming an entertaining player. His antics at the recent German Masters, where he launched a ball across the table, lashed his cue on the table and stormed off in an early round match, and smashed his hand on the table in frustration during another game, are reminiscent of Alex Higgins in his prime!
Allen can run like a racehorse but be as stubborn as a mule. On song, he has won this season’s single-frame Shootout competition and took the non-ranking Champion of Champions – where he thumped Judd Trump 10-3 in the final.
Temperament issues are always a concern with Mark Allen. His previous performances at the World Championship are not inspiring either. During the past 12 years, he has failed to progress beyond the second round ten times.
Neil Robertson
Bookmakers and fellow pros have no doubts about Robertson’s talent, and they retain faith in him. The Australian landed the World Championship in 2010 and won at least one ranking tournament every season until 2022/23. He has claimed 23 ranking tournaments in total.
However, in the first seven ranking tournaments of the season, the 41-year-old lost in the qualifiers of two competitions and was a first-round casualty in the other five. Thirty competitive matches during the current season have delivered an equal number of wins and losses.
On the bright side, of the 96 frames he has won, Robertson has recorded 21 century breaks, and there were definite signs of a form recovery in the recent German Masters where he won three matches and registered a 135 break.
Shaun Murphy
Murphy, now based in Ireland, won the season-opening Championship League but has suffered many early exits from several competitions since. He has also lost out in the qualifying stages of four ranking events.
The 2005 World Champion has a fair record in the ‘big one’ since his shock win 19 years ago. He has reached the final three times, the semi-final once and the quarter-final stages three times. However, he has been a first-round casualty three times in the past four years.
Season-long, Murphy is currently on a 55.5 percent play-to-win ratio – landing 21 of his 35 matches. Across his career, he has lost 25 of his 38 meetings with Judd Trump and 16 of his 20 face-offs with Ronnie O’Sullivan. These stats suggest a lot of luck is needed in 2024.
Luca Brecel
The shock winner of the 2023 World Championship title, Brecel has not turned the 2023/24 season into the lap of honour that many thought he would. He was a finalist in September 2023’s Shanghai Masters, but things have gone southerly since.
Failing to qualify for the BetVictor German Masters – where he was beaten 5-2 by the little-known Indian player Ishpreet Singh Chadha on January 29 – was the low point. The 28-year-old currently sits 44th on the one-year ranking list (2023/24 season), and this must have the ‘Belgian Bullett’ asking serious questions about himself.
