Stephen Hendry thinks Ronnie O’Sullivan still has a chance to win this season’s World Snooker Championship in Sheffield.
The Rocket has had only one competitive outing in 2025 so far, making an ill-fated appearance at the Championship League Snooker invitational in January.
O’Sullivan lost four out of the five games he played in Leicester before pulling out of the competition, snapping his cue and dumping it in the bin in frustration with his form.
Since then, the 49 year-old skipped his defence of the prestigious Masters and withdrew from a succession of other events.
A lack of playing time and ranking points has resulted in his failure to qualify for the Players and Tour Championships at the back end of the campaign.
Doubts continue to linger on whether or not he will actually turn up to compete in the 2025 edition of the World Snooker Championship.
But it wouldn’t be the first time that O’Sullivan has rocked up to the Crucible Theatre lacking competitive match sharpness only to prevail.
In 2013, O’Sullivan memorably defended his World Championship crown having taken practically the entire 2012/13 snooker season off.
While fellow seven-time world champion Hendry thinks O’Sullivan’s task would be even harder this time around, the Scot doesn’t write off the possibility entirely.
“He obviously did it before, didn’t he? He had a year off,” Stephen Hendry said on the latest episode of the Snooker Club Podcast.
“But he was a much younger man, and there wasn’t the players around that are in such form.”
“Listen, there were still great players. But I think there are more great players capable now of winning.
“There’s six or seven easily that you could count and maybe more who are capable of winning it.
“I fancy Selby to win it, [but] one of my hot takes was going to be that Ronnie is going to turn up and win it.
“If we just stop to think, what a story it would be. All these players – Wilson and Trump winning all these tournaments, Robertson back, Selby, Higgins back.
“Ronnie just decides that he’s just going to turn up to the Worlds and win it. It would be an unbelievable story.
“He’s that good. I remember when he did it before, when he had the year out, he messaged me and said, ‘do you think I can still come back and do it?’
“I said, ‘of course you can. All you need is a month’s solid practice.’ It’s the same this time.
“I don’t know what his cue situation is, because obviously he smashed his last one.
“But if he had like a month behind closed doors practicing and putting the work in, getting himself sharp, of course he would be one of the top two or three favourites to win it. It would be incredible.”
Ronnie O’Sullivan won the last of his seven World Championship titles in 2022 when he beat Judd Trump 18-13 in the final.
He has exited at the quarter-final stage in the last two campaigns, losing to eventual winner Luca Brecel in 2023 and suffering a shock loss to Stuart Bingham at the same stage in 2024.
The venue stages of the 2025 World Snooker Championship run from April 19th to May 5th, with Judd Trump and Kyren Wilson regarded as the two betting favourites for glory.
Featured photo credit: WST
