World Grand Prix

O`Sullivan faces lack of confidence,

but does more than enough to beat Robert Milkins

Ronnie needed just 55 minutes to beat Milkins

Ronnie O`Sullivan looks to have met again his form, as he beat Robert Milkins easily.

Milkins has had a lot of nightmares against Ronnie throughout his career, he lost to Ronnie 1-5 at the 2000 Grand Prix, 2-13 at the 2002 World Snooker Championship, 0-6 at the 2013 UK Championship and 1-6 at the 2015 Masters (where he punched the air when he got on the board at 0-5 behind) in the previous time he played him.

In fact, Milkins - who has only won 4 frames over Ronnie in 15 years - have a playing style that suits Ronnie, he chooses his shots very fast, throw away some chances, left the opponent get table time and relaxing over the match.

The history should be different this time if Milkins had potted a thin Green on it's own pocket trying to position for the brown which was placed at the left bottom side cushion. He left it over the pocket and Ronnie made an amazing positional to get brown and then cleared the table to go 1-0 up. He never looked back from that as he compiled runs of 72, 64 and 68, with Milkins' mind totally lost in the last frames. 

For Ronnie it was an OK performance, he has improved from his first match, but we got to consider he had a tougher opponent there.

He's got Graeme Dott next and it's gonna be a big test for him as Dott has been playing well already beating John Higgins and Liang Wenbo in this event.

But the lights has been on Ronnie's last interviews where he has been saying his time in Snooker has gone. He recently published his latest Eurosport blog  about it, and honestly, from what I understood from, he has been playing great Snooker, he knows he's on his peak and can't get any better. But recent loses against Neil Robertson and Shaun Murphy has been a big down to his confidence because he's feeling he can't compete with them. He's been in doubt if he'll keep playing if his form don't give him success anymore. So this World Championship is the tournament of his life, a loss there should really mark the end of his career.

But in my honest opinion, he is still the Best in the World, he's recently won the Champion of Champions and the UK Championship, so to require even more from him is a lot hard with himself.

If he had loses against low ranked players, he should just be like "oh, ok I lost to a low ranked player, it was silly but I won't fail anymore", but the fact he's lot to the Top Guys might makes him think he's not up for the challenge anymore.

The ideal should win this Grand Prix - what I think he's very capable of -, because he's been one month off and it should kind of tell him even after one month out he can beat the very best players in the World. But if it don't happen let's hope he wins the China Open, and be little less-hard with himself at the World Championship.

We are in front of a big moment of his career, but we have seen so many. Over the years we've listened to "he's never gonna win a world title", "his career is over", "he's never gonna dominate the game" and now he is a 5 Time World Champion so I'm sure his career is still away from a finish.

Mark Selby and Neil Robertson lost to Martin Gould and Mark Davis respectively, and of course with Murphy being knocked out in the first Round, it looks like a tournament for either Judd Trump or Ronnie O`Sullivan. This is how the Quarter Final draw looks:

Martin Gould (7) Peter Ebdon

Mark Williams (7) Judd Trump

Mark Davis (7) Stuart Bingham

Graeme Dott (7)  Ronnie O`Sullivan | Friday 20, at 19:00 Local/Welsh time

Check all results

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