On April 27, the first four places at the 2022 World Snooker Championships were decided! The No. 2 seed of the tournament and the current biggest six-time champion "Rocket" O'Sullivan used only two sets in the third stage to easily defeat Scotland's Maguire from the qualifiers 13-5 to advance to the final four. This is also the 13th time in O'Sullivan's career to reach the top 4 of the World Championships, leaving Hendry alone and enjoying the status of the first person in history. In the semi-finals, O'Sullivan will compete for a place in the final with higgins and Lissovsky's direct winners.
Ahead of this year's World Championships, O'Sullivan returned to the world number one spot, but he was not the biggest favorite to win the title, and was preempted by four-time champion Robertson in a single season. But after the first two rounds of the World Championships, O'Sullivan hardly encountered much challenge and pressure, winning consecutive victories over Gilbert and Allen to advance smoothly. Maguire, on the other hand, fell out of the top 16 in the world rankings before the World Championships and was forced to participate in the qualifiers, winning two consecutive games and successfully qualifying, and eliminating Murphy and Zhao Xintong in the first two rounds of the main tournament, achieving a meeting with O'Sullivan's top 8.
The two have previously played each other 15 times in professional competitions, with O'Sullivan taking an absolute lead 13-2. So for O'Sullivan, Maguire can be said to be a great blessing. The two last met at the World Championships, with O'Sullivan beating Maguire, who also advanced from qualifying, 10-7 in the first round of the 2018 matchup.
In yesterday's two-stage competition, O'Sullivan has maintained the lead, from 6-2 in the first stage to 11-5 in the second stage, the game basically lost suspense, O'Sullivan advanced to the top 4, only two sets away from winning. In today's third stage of the competition, O'Sullivan won consecutive one-shot victories from the beginning, directly winning the victory, and won easily 13-5. In the full game, O'Sullivan scored 2 hundreds and 8 50+, while Maguire only had 5 50+.
As O'Sullivan advanced to the round of four, he set a new record, reaching the quarter-finals of the World Championships for the 13th time in his career, leaving behind hendry, who had previously tied for hendry, who reached the quarter-finals 12 times. Davis is third 11 times, and Higgins has been fourth 10 times before and is expected to enter again this year to tie davis. While Jimmy White tied for fourth 10 times, Williams had only 6 before.