Rocket Ronnie wins German Masters snooker title

Ronnie O’Sullivan beat Stephen Maguire 9-7 to lift this year’s German Masters trophy. Although the three-time world champion closed the first session behind 5-3, in the second O’Sullivan didn’t just make a comeback, he also went on to win the match.

The English-Scottish snooker affair started with Ronnie O’Sullivan breaking the ice with a break of 111, which received a series of 130, 106 and 128 in response from Scotland’s Stephen Maguire.

O’Sullivan missed a red on 58 during the 5th frame, this bringing Maguire to the table, runs of 38 and 21 extending his lead at 4-1. Still, minutes later, the two-frames-gap was reinstalled after the Englishman used a top break of 43.

As the first session was coming to and end, Maguire managed to win the penultimate frame, while O’Sullivan was careful enough to cash the last one with a 75 in order to enter the evening session being lead 5-3.

Hours later, The Tempodrom Arena from Berlin was packed as the players were making their second and last appearance, carefully supervised by referee in charge, Michael Tabb.

The first one in was Maguire, whose breaks of 46 and 69 were putting him 6-3 up against O’Sullivan. But his dominance was soon to be over as “The Rocket” started his attack.

A great clearance of 96 points was bringing O’Sullivan the first frame of the evening, while runs of 54 and 41 were helping him turn the scoreline into 6-6.

As the comeback was complete, the only thing left to do was to keep on cruising towards victory. The next couple of frames entered into O’Sullivan’s pocket with a bit of help from breaks like 67, 43 and 38 – the Englishman being now just one step away from winning the competition, 8-6.

But Maguire didn’t give up and pulled back a frame after clearing the table with an 82.

A very tense and important 16th frame was re-racked, the first in with a chance being O’Sullivan. Although he broke off at 46 and Maguire didn’t make the most of this chance, so the following minutes were spent on safety shots.

Maguire needed the colours to force a decider but he hit the last blue too hard which paved the way for O’Sullivan’s come back where he sent it into the green pocket, followed by the pink.

Although Ronnie O’Sullivan has won no less than two ranking events this season (Players Tour Championship event one and seven), the German masters is the first major ranking event that “The Rocket” has won since the 2009 Shanghai masters.

The first German snooker ranking event took place in 1995 under the name of German open and it ran until 1997. The next year the tournament changed its name to the German masters but was no longer a ranking one. It was reborn in 2011 under the same name however, and once again became part of the ranking tournaments’ list.

Ramona Dragomir