O'Sullivan Brilliance Leaves Mcguire Floundering

Ronnie O'Sullivan raced to a 10-2 victory over Stephen McGuire in the UK Championship last night with a display of relentless consistency. The previous evening his 147 break provided a glorious finish to his semi-final before setting up victory in the best-of-19-frames final with two 78s among the six half-centuries that carried him to an 8-0 interval lead.

The two-time world champion took under an hour to wrap up the two frames required for victory in the evening session with an awesome display. Maguire restored some pride with two half-centuries in the ninth and 11th frames, but it was a case of when rather than if as O'Sullivan recorded his two biggest breaks of the match to complete a victory which restores him to provisional world No1.

The last time O'Sullivan lifted the UK title was in 2001, when he swept aside Ken Doherty 10-1, and this contest was similarly one-sided.

In his semi-final O'Sullivan, long famed as a front runner, had shown admirable grit as he struggled against the grain, trailing 3-0, 4-1, 6-3 and 7-5 before overcoming Mark Selby 9-8 in their semi-final with his sublime 147 in the deciding frame equaling Stephen Hendry's record of eight maximums in competition.

Pleased as he was "to give the crowd something to cheer", O'Sullivan gave a ruthlessly professional assessment of his overall performance: "I'd rather have won 9-3 with no unforced errors."

Like Bernard Malamud's baseball player protagonist in The Natural, the purity of O'Sullivan's extraordinary talent can be and often has been blighted by the confusing forces of real life but when his moment of truth arrived against Selby, his 147 was like smiting a home run deep into the bleachers.

It is only 12 months since inner turmoil prompted him to concede his UK quarter-final in the sixth frame of a possible 17. In his 32 months without winning a ranking title he has won the Masters at Wembley (commuting from his Chigwell home, only four matches required) and for the last four years the Premier League one-night stands, with a 25 seconds per shot time limit, but has seemed too restive for the long haul of world-ranking tournaments (at least nine days).

For years he has been the man to beat in just about every event but there have been times when he has effectively beaten himself. This season, though, he has seemed much more settled emotionally and his defeats by Marco Fu in the final of October's grand prix and by Fergal O'Brien in the quarter-finals of the Northern Ireland trophy arose simply through exceptional performances from his opponents.

Just 32, 15 birthdays after he first won the UK title, he knows that the next five years or so will define, in terms of titles, his place in snooker's pantheon, although it may be already too late, with only two world titles to his name, to emulate Hendry's seven.

While he has been fighting for mental equilibrium these last few years, such considerations have been a low priority. But, above all, he would still like to be at his peak in two years' time, when his father, having served his 18-year prison sentence for killing Charlie Kray's driver in a nightclub brawl, can be with him at tournaments, as he was when he was a teenage prodigy, without a care in the world.