The 2022 World Snooker Championships finally began with a showdown in the main stages, with youngster Zhao Xintong leading Jamie Clark 7-2 and defending champion Mark Selby leading Jimmy Jones 6-3.
Another focus battle is Ronnie O'Sullivan's showdown against David Gilbert, the two sides have previously recorded O'Sullivan's seven wins to take an absolute lead, and Gilbert's pre-match interview said that O'Sullivan was the last player he wanted to meet.
At the beginning of the game, O'Sullivan took the lead in kicking off and missed a long red ball, Gilbert quickly entered the state and scored accurately, although the next simple red ball was lost, but O'Sullivan did not complete the continuous scoring, Gilbert completed the super point for the second time, and directly cleared the table to get a 1-0 opening red when O'Sullivan was ready to practice.
Back in the second set, O'Sullivan still couldn't find the offensive feel, and even lost a simple red ball in the middle bag, while Gilbert's hand was getting hotter and hotter, directly blasting out a single shot 90+ to establish a 2-0 lead.
The cold feel of the first two innings made O'Sullivan also make frequent mistakes in the third set, the defense missed the opportunity with the opportunity to overscore, Gilbert came on to close the score, and then O'Sullivan hit the green ball error and K out the coffee ball Gilbert smiled and smiled at the gift to continue to lead 3-0.
In the fourth inning, O'Sullivan finally regained a bit of form, slipped through the bench without mercy in Gilbert's defense, and did not give Gilbert another chance to play, and the first shot of the game exceeded 122 points to enter the intermission 1-3.
After resting, O'Sullivan took the lead into the longstand to establish a 40+ lead, Gilbert did not want to show weakness and continued to attack and began to close the score and make a precise defense when there was only one red ball left, but O'Sullivan was clearly better not only to easily defuse but also to return to a snooker and get the opportunity to achieve a super point to win another set.
As O'Sullivan's feel revived Gilbert mentality was obviously a bit unbearable, and successive mistakes also made it easy for O'Sullivan to equalize the score with a 50+ shot, and then blasted the second shot in the seventh set to win 4-3 in a row of four consecutive wins.
In the last two sets of the first stage, Gilbert's mentality can be said to be completely broken, first in the case of the first start, O'Sullivan once again hit 60+ to open the score, and then in the ninth set directly stopped the red ball at the mouth of the bag, O'Sullivan completed the single 50+ and then started to complete the super points again and finally ended the first stage of the game with a 6-3 reversal.
Throughout the first stage of the showdown, Gilbert performed remarkablely in the first three sets, but as O'Sullivan's hand warmed up, Gilbert's mentality as if he would not play was also completely broken, and finally suffered from O'Sullivan's six-game winning streak to lead 6-3.
The second phase of the showdown will officially start tomorrow night at 21:00, and if Gilbert can't adjust back to his mentality then the game may not be suspenseful.