A run I've watched many times, as it's been on telly repeatedly, as well as on YT. One aspect that makes Snooker depend on luck a bit more than e.g. Straight Pool is that players usually end up shooting a colour to break out the remaining reds with the cue ball, so they're rarely leaving themselves an insurance ball as a top Straight Pool player would. This absence of a safety valve leads to either what we've seen in the 2012 WC, where Ronnie played so well, yet seldom had a viable continuation after his breakouts, and often had to play safe instead of trying something haphazard (which, one must admire that in him, he's always had the patience to do), or in the case of that secondary breakout from the black he plays here, which could easily have gone wrong, instead he's able to see that one red into the middle pocket, and on top of this, with the right angle to get back into position on the black. A memorable run, no doubt, but even if I may be alone in this opinion, one could witness some in this year's WC (and other years) that weren't nearly as high, but so much more difficult to pull off, in particular I remember one where all except the bulk colours and the blue were out of commission, and almost all the reds near the foot rail, partly clustered around the black and pink. Ronnie also managed to fall short of the good side of the blue several times, yet pulled off one seemingly impossible position shot after the other to keep the run going, even if at the end, if I remember correctly, he lost concentration and gave that frame away. Even so, the true difficulty of playing to perfection sometimes goes unnoticed, as most fans are unable to analyze the lay of the balls with a player's eye. I realize there's some fascination as to 147 being the maximum break, but in a best case scenario, it's a matter of pocketing 36 balls, 21 of which are waiting patiently on their designated spots, the type of position play that pros can execute in their sleep (almost!). The other part of the fascination lies in Ronnie's seemingly fast and loose style, which per se has little to do with the perfection of what he does on the table - it's just fun, and deceiving, as the average spectator is being duped into believing it's all a piece of cake, when the reality is that there's nothing more difficult than to make the difficult look easy.
Greetings from Switzerland, David.
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„J'ai gâché vingt ans de mes plus belles années au billard. Si c'était à refaire, je recommencerais.“ – Roger Conti
