Snooker: O'sullivan Rockets to Victory

Ronnie O'Sullivan, burning less rocket fuel than he has in recent days, required only 20 minutes of last night's final session to win his second Embassy World Championship, beating Graeme Dott 18-8. It was the most one-sided final in 11 years.

He said: "I feel ready to go again. My last three matches were pretty comfortable. I really can play better than that. But when I went 5-0 down I thought I might lose 18-0.

"There were all kinds of mind games going on. And when Graeme's coach Derek Hill [O'Sullivan's coach when he first won the title in 2001] came in the room at a quarter to three on the first day of the final it got to my head, it really did. But it's a lesson."

O'Sullivan, leading 9-7 overnight, won yesterday's opening session 7-1, which meant he had won 16 out of 19 frames and went into last night's final session 16-8 up and needing just two of the final eight frames to become only the fourth player to win more than one championship at this venue.

With a break of 92 in the first frame of the evening he moved 17-8 ahead. In the final frame he put together two breaks of 33, but with the championship only two balls away he missed a relatively easy pink. His triumph was not long delayed. When Dott broke down after scoring only 16, O'Sullivan responded with another 22. He missed a red down the rail, but Dott immediately conceded.

Asked whether he had learned much, Dott replied: "Yes, I've learned that Ronnie is phenomenal. Apart from his potting his safety play was fantastic." A tearful O'Sullivan later dedicated the win, worth £250,000, to his father, who is serving a life sentence for murder at Long Lartin prison.

"People call me the Rocket, but I've slowed down and it has made me more consistent. But even more than winning this, I'm looking forward to working with Ray [Reardon]. He's added a new dimension to my game. He's fun and encourages me to play left-handed," he added.

The balance of yesterday's contest appeared unchanged from the day before, which concluded with O'Sullivan winning the final three frames. But the snooker that illuminated the stage with his destruction of Stephen Hendry in the semi-finals was missing. This was O'Sullivan at his most controlled. When he got in he was fluent and usually decisive. Sometimes brilliant and occasionally forlorn, yesterday he looked just an ordinary great player, a genius in repose. Dott, though, looked exhausted after his efforts of the previous 17 days. He didn't play abjectly, but he was unable to raise himself to the heights of the previous day when he stunned not only O'Sullivan but the snooker world by leading 5-0.

When he did get in he looked like a furtive, frightened trespasser on O'Sullivan's small and private lawn; and the maestro soon shooed him away before he trampled all over his plants. If O'Sullivan did nothing spectacular, there were few mistakes. The reds spread like measles whenever he went into them and, just like the day before, his control of the cue ball was so exemplary he might have had it on a piece of string.

O'Sullivan won the first frame of the afternoon with comfortable breaks of 41 and 30 to move 10-7 ahead.

He looked in the mood for something a little more spectacular when he took five blacks with his reds to build up a 40-0 lead in the 18th. But just as the theatre started to hiss with whispers of a possible maximum, he missed a simple red. Another break of 45, though, saw him home 85-0.

The next frame brought Dott's solitary triumph of the afternoon, albeit a stylish one. He compiled the biggest break of the match, 106, to pull back to 11-8. But O'Sullivan re- established his four-frame advantage in the final frame before the interval with a 65 clearance.

Dott bossed the early stages of the 21st frame when he established a 43-0 advantage. But then he lost position and O'Sullivan's 85 clearance put him 13-8 ahead. Breaks of 62 in the next frame, 46 and 32 in the 23rd and 61 in the final session put him 16-8 up. Dott seemed overwhelmed not only by O'Sullivan's superior craft but by his own extraordinary adventures. In an event lasting longer than the Olympic Games, he had already played the best snooker of his life.

But, in truth, it was not a great final, especially when those of the previous two years are recalled. But at least the greatest player of them all is beginning to punch his considerable weight.