Ronnie O’Sullivan breezed into the second round of the World Snooker Championship with a 10-2 victory over He Guoqiang, revealing he had switched to an old cue retrieved from under his bed in Ireland. The seven-time champion needed only 35 minutes on Tuesday to seal the win, compiling centuries of 113 and 100 to set up a last-16 clash with fellow 50-year-old John Higgins.
O’Sullivan said his original cue was “hopeless” in the first session, but the replacement felt right. “It was stuck under my bed in Ireland, basically, for most of the year until I came here,” he explained. Despite his dominant performance, O’Sullivan admitted uncertainty about his title prospects, having skipped numerous ranking events this season. “I’m still a bit rusty,” he added. “Nothing’s impossible.”
Meanwhile, Hossein Vafaei began his campaign with a 6-3 lead over China’s Si Jiahui, but the Iranian revealed the immense difficulty of concentrating amid the US and Israeli bombardment of Iran. The war, which began on 28 February, has engulfed the Gulf and Lebanon, with an uneasy truce extended by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Vafaei, Iran’s first professional snooker player, said he fights for his country and family. “You get a bad text in the day and you can’t focus on your job. How can I focus?” he told the BBC. The 31-year-old, known as the “Persian Prince”, confirmed his family are safe but described the emotional rollercoaster as “very, very hard”. He reached the last 16 in 2023 and 2025, and now leads the 2023 semi-finalist Si.
