‘I don’t think anyone has’: Ronnie O’Sullivan slams youth snooker weapons at UK Championship

World snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan reached the quarter-finals of the UK Championship with a 6-0 victory over China’s Zhou Yuelong in York.

O’Sullivan scored the biggest closing stages break to date, with a total clearance of 137, in frame three and completed the whitewash with a break of 103 against a terrible unfit opponent.

Chu scored just 81 points in the whole match and 63 of those came in frame five before he missed the halfway red and O’Sullivan scored 82 to add to the misery.

O’Sullivan insists none of the young snooker talents – including 24-year-old Chu – have the potential to rise to the occasion, telling the BBC: “I don’t think anyone has (that).

“There’s definitely no Stephen Hendry or John Higgins in my book. Some people do it in shifts, but it’s not easy to maintain.

“I’ve never had a problem with crowds and the bigger the occasion the more I enjoy it. If you can’t handle it, you’ll struggle.

“I think in your makeup, you were born with a love of pressure and big events. You can’t teach that, you either have it or you don’t.”

“Stephen Hendry at 15, we all knew he was different. Steve Davis was different, Tiger Woods. You just look into their eyes and they have a different intensity.”

Zhou has reached the tournament on a high note after reaching the final of the Northern Ireland Open last month and finishing fourth in the year-long ranking list.

But the Chinese racket, which has a strange history on big occasions, after losing 9-0 to Neil Robertson in the final of the European Masters 2020 simply collapsed with a series of terrible failures.

When asked if he thought Zhou had a “star” against the seven-time world champion, O’Sullivan said: “Not really.

“I take every game like I’m going to get beaten. I’ll never go out there with overconfidence, I’ll just play my game. I know he didn’t play, but at the moment that’s what everyone is doing against me.

“I think I’m bad, but probably everyone else is bad; that’s a fair assessment.

“I have fun everywhere I go, I had a great time. I just don’t like it when I don’t play well, but I have to put up with it, it’s an integral part of the game.

“If my bad is better than everyone else’s, then I have to accept that, but I’m not far from playing well. You’ll never know.”