The Snooker greats of the last 10 years

I think you can't really argue much against the fact that Ronnie O`Sullivan has been the best Snooker player in the World for the last ten years. Despite taking long times out occasionally (and that includes 11 months out from 2012 to 2013 and 8 months out from 2015 to 2016), his first successful defence of the Masters title a couple of weeks ago was his 9th Triple Crown event win in the last 10 years, out of 12 Finals. To come with that, O`Sullivan has got quite a few others Ranking, Minors and Invitational tournaments under his belt throughout this period of time - that includes a few Welsh Open, a couple Champion of Champions and one Paul Hunter Classic.

However, you will often hear that the overall standard in Snooker has improved a lot in recent years and that no one's dominating. That's true, O`Sullivan won "only" 30% of the Triple Crown events played in the last ten years and that means that another 70% have been won by different players, great players.

But who are these greats? I've made a little Ranking here counting only the Triple Crown events of the last 10 years (The Masters since 2008, World Snooker Championship and UK Championship since 2007), (awarding 60 points for a World title, with the runner-up getting 30; and 40 points for a Masters/UK title, with the runner-up getting 15) and I'll analyze later some pretty interesting facts about these numbers.

(Finals-Titles in brackets)

1st Ronnie O`Sullivan 480 points (12-9)

2nd Mark Selby 395 points (11-7)

3rd John Higgins 235 points (5-4)

4th Neil Robertson 210 points (6-4)

5th Shaun Murphy 170 points (6-2)

6th Ding Junhui 110 points (3-2)

7th Judd Trump 85 points (3-1)

8th Ali Carter 60 points (2-0)

8th Stuart Bingham 60 points (1-1)

10th Barry Hawkins 45 points (2-0)

11th Graeme Dott 30 points (1-0)

11th Marco Fu 30 points (2-0)

Players with 15 points: Stephen Maguire, Mark Williams, Mark Allen, Liang Wenbo, Stephen Lee and Joe Perry.

Personally I think this list is very fair even though it only counts three events; I wouldn't change much if anything of it to be honest.

Interestingly, I think Ding Junhui should be ranked a lot higher than he is (though I reckon 6th is very good and the players above him are legends). He's got the potential for that but it wasn't until last year that he really got going in the World Championship. Anyway I'm sure that if I remake this Ranking in 7-8 years Ding will be at least a couple positions higher than he is now.

Another funny fact is that even though you can't say that the players inside the top 12, with more than 15 points, aren't greats, there's a lot of potential outside that group. Stephen Maguire is a great example of it, but the last few years has been a struggle for him - only one, unsuccessful, Final in Triple Crown events is very disappointing for the player who was once tipped to dominate game. There's also Mark Williams, an all-time great whose probably lost of appetite for winning is the reason for his modest 15 points; and Mark Allen, a bit overrated in my view who needs to come a gear up if he wants to mix with people like Barry Hawkins and Marco Fu.

And what can you say about Matthew Stevens? Totally disappeared for the last 10 years but got so close of winning the World Championship twice and is a former Masters and UK Champion. Stevens doesn't even appear between the 18 players who reached a Triple Crown event Final for the last 10 years, anyway I think age is not a problem for him just yet and I think technically his performances over the last few months have been much better and the results haven't come yet because being ranked as low as he is you're always getting tricky draws - but don't be surprised when his week comes!

In 2nd and 3rd places are Mark Selby and John Higgins respectively, despite the fact that John Higgins has won 3 World Titles and Selby has won 2 over these past ten years - Selby's 160 points lead over Higgins in the Rankings are easily clarified when you think that he has scored 95 points in UK Championship's against Higgins's 55 and then smashes him at The Masters with 150 points to 0.

As for the next 10 years, who's going to be the Snooker greats? Well, we've had 18 different Triple Crown events finalists for the past ten years and the youngest of them (Judd Trump) is 27 right now. We expect to see some players vanishing from this list in ten years and that makes we wonder who's gonna get into it. We might have Matthew Stevens making a come back and I cannot see Kyren Wilson and Yan Bingtao not making a few Triple Crown event Finals in the next decade. There's also a lot of potential in the likes of Michael White, Anthony McGill and Luca Brecel; Always difficult to tell though how their careers will turn out. 

At the top, O`Sullivan sits comfortably on his throne with an 85-point lead to the one closest below him. That advantage would be even bigger if the Ranking counted the last 15 or even 20 years. 

O`Sullivan has won, as cited before, 9 Triple Crown events in the last 10 years, and even now at 41 he has collected at least one in each of the last 6 seasons. I don't know when that will stop, but it looks like a certainty that the next in line to take over that first position is the reigning World Champion Mark Selby. 

You pretend Ronnie doesn't exist and then you have that small matter of 160 points between Selby and the rest of the World. Selby is 33 right now and the perspectives are that he'll keep being the best player in the World for the next seven or eight years at least! Anyway it'll be interesting to see how long O`Sullivan can keep nicking one Triple Crown event off him here and there, how much Neil Robertson, who's 34, will add to his name and how many Ding Junhui and Judd Trump will be able to win before Selby calls it a day.

At The Masters 2017, Selby lost the chance to complete the slam (winning the World Championship, the UK Championship and The Masters in a row) for his first time, but I'm afraid he's going to have another chance and we're starting to live an era of domination. Probably not like Davis' in the 80's or Hendry's in the 90's, but certainly something that haven't been seen for two decades.

Well, whether Selby will dominate the next few years or not you can start to find out at the German Masters this week. Be aware you can follow that through Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook.