On January 7, 2024, Beijing time, the Snooker Masters will start. The top 16 players in the world were invited to participate in this competition, with Chinese players Ding Junhui and Zhang Anda shortlisted for the competition, and Chinese players Ding Junhui and Yan Bingtao won the Masters championship, and this competition is expected to make a new breakthrough.
O'sullivan
In the first round of the game, Chinese player Zhang Anda played against the "80 Five Tigers" Shaun Murphy, the two played each other 4 times in history, and Zhang Anda won 1 win and 3 losses. Zhang Anda has been playing professionally since 2009, but his results have been tepid, losing professional competition in 2020 and returning to professional competition in 2021. Since the start of the season, Zhang Anda's ball skills have soared, and he has been impeccable on both the offensive and defensive ends. Zhang Anda reached the final of the English Open, and finally lost to Trump 7:10 and was the runner-up. He then reached the final of the National Championships and defeated Tom Forde to win his first professional title, and the world ranking soared to 13th. Although Murphy has an advantage in terms of historical results and matchups, Zhang Anda has an advantage in recent form.
Zhang Anda
Ding Junhui challenged nemesis O'Sullivan in the first round, which was the 35th meeting between the two and the fourth meeting this season. The two have played each other 34 times, and O'Sullivan has an absolute advantage of 23 wins, 8 losses and 3 draws, and O'Sullivan is definitely Ding Junhui's nemesis. The first meeting this season was in the final of the British Championships, and finally O'Sullivan defeated Ding Junhui 10:7 to win, and then met in the Macau Masters exhibition match, O'Sullivan won 6:2 against Ding Junhui, the most recent was in the Lhasa exhibition match, Ding Junhui won 5 games in a row after falling behind 1:5, and the big score was 6:5 to beat O'Sullivan to win.
O'sullivan
Ding Junhui is currently ranked 9th in the world and is the best player in China and even Asia. Ding Junhui has won 14 ranking tournaments in his career, including 3 British Championship championships and 1 Masters championship, and has won 5 ranking tournament championships in a single season. Since winning the British Championships in 2019, Ding Junhui has not won the ranking championship for more than 4 years, and the world ranking once fell out of the top 32 last season, and the world ranking returned to the top 16 after winning the runner-up in the British Championships, and he won the runner-up in the British Championships again this season, and the world ranking broke into the top 10.
O'Sullivan is ranked No. 1 in the world, won 40 ranking championships in his career, has achieved 7 laps of the Grand Slam, with the British Championship this season, and is one step closer to the 8th lap of the Grand Slam. This season, O'Sullivan only participated in 5 tournaments and 26 matches, including winning the Shanghai Masters and the British Championship, with a winning rate of 81%.
Ding
Ding Junhui must break through O'Sullivan if he wants to achieve better results, in fact, O'Sullivan is not so terrible, this season Chinese player Zhang Anda has achieved two consecutive victories against O'Sullivan. As long as Ding Junhui maintains his ability to encircle the ball, strengthens his defense, and reduces unnecessary attacks, he is likely to defeat O'Sullivan.