O'Sullivan easily defeated veteran Nigel Bond 5-1 in the second round against China's Anda Zhang.
In the early morning of February 22, Beijing time, Ronnie O'Sullivan easily defeated veteran Nigel Bond 5-1 to advance to the round of 64. The match was O'Sullivan and Bond's first meeting in nearly 24 years.
This season O'Sullivan has already won the World Grand Prix, a ranking title. He will face China's Zhang Anda in the second round at 10:30 p.m. Beijing time on Tuesday.
Bond lost six times to O'Sullivan between 1994 and 1998, and after only 1/4 of a century the two sides fought again, Bond still failed to recapture a city. O'Sullivan opened the set with a single-shot 82 and then extended the lead to 3-0. Bond won the 4th inning in the colored round to go to intermission, and O'Sullivan then scored 132 points to win 4-1 and sealed the victory with 50 points in the 6th set.
"It's a pleasure to get through." O'Sullivan, who is ranked No. 2 in the world, said, "I'm always in good shape, focused on making myself feel good and doing what I want to do. I love what I do, I love my life and I enjoy every moment of it. I've done so much in the sport, won so much, hit the ceiling. I'm not excited about it anymore, it's just a way of life that I enjoy. ”
"I was excited about it at the beginning of my career because I wanted those achievements. But when you break all the records, you think about why you're doing these things, so I found other reasons to keep doing it, which is to enjoy it and hide from home. I'll play a few more shots tomorrow and have some fun. ”
Neil Robertson, the strongest performer of the season, has won three titles, beating China's Lei Peifan 5-2 in his first match. Robertson has 130, 98, 67 and 52 points in this game, and the Australian will play against Alfie Borden on Tuesday night (early Wednesday morning Beijing time).
Ashley Hugh Gill, ranked 81st in the world, gave the odds by beating Jack Lisowski, who was ranked 64th higher than him in the world, 5-3. Hugh Gil from York came up with a one-shot performance of 84, 59, 68 and 54 in this game.
'I played a great clearance to make it 2-2 and it gave me the momentum I needed. Hugh Gill said, "This season I have shown that I can copy the level of training into the game, and I have beaten some good players. If I can get a good result in any race, I can greatly improve the ranking. ”
"The last 5 years have been a process of learning and progressing. The quality of my training is very high, such as playing against Yan Bingtao and Zhao Xintong. They actually gave me extra confidence to win the race because I knew I could play against them. ”