Can Ronnie O`Sullivan defend his Masters crown?

Next Sunday, the 15th January, The Masters gets underway at the Alexandra Palace in London. The tournament runs until Sunday the 22nd with the usual coverage from the BBC, something they've been doing since the tournament first took place, in 1975.

Last year, in beating Barry Hawkins 10-1 in the Final Ronnie O`Sullivan won his record-equalling 6th Masters title. But The Rocket have now failed to lift a trophy for 10 months and fans wonder whether he's been playing well enough to finish that drought at The Masters.
Well, in my opinion O`Sullivan is in fact very close of his very best, his performances have been great - he made 3 Finals already this season including at the Champion of Champions and the UK Championship, the 2 most relevant tournaments of the season so far.
His performances against Neil Robertson in the European Masters and Mark Allen in the Champion of Champions (and even in defeat against Kyren Wilson in the Northern Ireland Open) shows that technically he's good enough to play like he did in 2014 - the best year of his career to date -, though it hasn't exactly been like that, and I think it's clear why.
For me the reason why Ronnie O`Sullivan haven't won anything this season yet is lack of confidence; In 2014 he was dominating and he knew he was the undisputed best player in the World, but after a dream start, 2016 destroyed his confidence on the table with a disappointing run in Sheffield and losses in major Finals against John Higgins and Mark Selby, old rivals who have got the better of him over the years.

However I don't think this will be much of a problem for Ronnie in London. It's probably his favourite tournament all season and no one has had a better record than him at The Masters. The only problem is that another player in the field have been more successful at The Masters than anywhere else in his career, and this one is Mark Selby.
Selby is undoubtedly the best player in the World right now - and that helps for Ronnie to be unconfident as he had been used to be seen as the best for more than a decade -, he's found a consistency that has given him several fantastic results, including the titles of the three richest Ranking Tournaments there are (World Championship, UK Championship and International Championship), and the result of that is him getting close to £1m in Ranking Points (they're based on prize money) - virtually twice as much as World No2 Stuart Bingham.
Mark Selby is for me then, the favourite to win the title, as he is in every tournament he enters thanks to his ability to win tournaments such as the World Championship when playing nothing more than 20% of his game.

I am not, of course, writing everyone else off. It would be mad to say that Ding Junhui, John Higgins or Judd Trump haven't got a chance to win this the way they have been playing - and you should also keep an eye on Stuart Bingham, people won't think he's got a great chance because he haven't won anything for 18 months now and didn't do very well at the UK Championship, but you can't forget that he has made at least the Semi-Finals in each of the Triple Crown events having won the World Championship, and in fact his recent performances have been much better than his 2015/16 season's and he has narrowly missed trophies lately.

It's also going to be the first year ever that every single player in the draw for The Masters have won at least one Ranking Title, anyway I think it's unlikely that the Masters' Final won't be a remake of the first Triple Crown event of the season's - the combination of how well O`Sullivan and Selby are playing, how they usually raise their games at the Masters, and (though there's no easy draw at The Masters) you fully expect them to make it through the Semi-Finals with no problems makes it diffcult to say otherwise.

Well, playing each other in the Final or not, this could be a special title for either Ronnie O`Sullivan or Mark Selby.
For Ronnie, this could be his 7th Masters title, putting him alone in 1st place in the all-time list one ahead Stephen Hendry; And this would also mean 6 seasons in a row winning a Triple Crown event in each of them, something that doesn't happen since 1997 when Hendry completed 9 seasons in a row winning at least one Triple Crown event in each, proving that Ronnie O`Sullivan is living now, at 41, the peak of his career.
As for Selby, a win would be his 4th at The Masters, putting him alone in 3rd in the all-time list behind only Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O`Sullivan; And more importantly, he would become the owner of all the three Triple Crown events at the same time, something that doesn't happen since 2002/03 when Mark Williams completed a season's Triple Crown.



Thanks for reading, there's not long to go now before the 2nd Triple Crown event of the season gets underway in London, and you can follow all the action through Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook 😉!