“They’re pushing each other on a bit like Federer, Djokovic and Nadal” Snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan compares Chinese players to Tennis’ Big-3
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Ronnie O'Sullivan and Big-3 of Tennis
Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal as a trio have rightly deserved to be called the Big-3 of Tennis for the illustrious careers they have had and dominated the entire sport while fighting in a league of their own. The trio has jointly won 61 of the last 76 Grand Slams in tennis and has racked up big numbers on the Tour as well during the same time.
As they continue to go big in the sport of tennis, snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan, 6-time world champion and the world number 1 on multiple occasions, compared them to the rise of Chinese snooker players who are now making life difficult for the other players in the sport of Snooker.
Ronnie lost in the finals of the European Masters to Fan Zhengyi by a narrow 10-9 margin. Despite finishing as the runner-up, the British superstar heaped praise on his Chinese counterpart and also on Zhengyi’s compatriots Zhao Xintong and Yan Bingtao, comparing them to the Big-3, in what one can call as a compliment of the highest level.
“He was the better player all day, deserved his victory. I think they’re all being inspired by each other at the moment, you’ve got [Yan] Bingtao, [Zhao] Xintong, this lad [Zhengyi] here, there’s a couple more. They’re pushing each other on a bit like Federer, Djokovic and Nadal have done. They all work hard because they know the competition’s that good,” said O’Sullivan as reported by Eurosport.
Ronnie O’Sullivan warns of China’s take over in the sport
Having lost to Fan, Ronnie warned that if the UK and other European countries don’t improve the grassroots levels for the younger generation, the Chinese system has made many athletes ready to take over the sport and dominate it as they are doing it currently with their table-tennis model.
“Great for Chinese snooker, great for these young guys, great for snooker and pleasure to watch and a pleasure to play a future world champion today. Chinese snooker do a fantastic job, it’s a shame the UK can’t copy the format. We’re going to get left behind, it would be a shame because we’ve had a lot of British players and European players. If we don’t do something about grassroots snooker it’ll be like table tennis, they’ll be batting us off the park,” added Ronnie further.
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Sarthak Shitole
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