Snooker: Ronnie Takes A 4th UK Title

Ronnie played some great snooker to take his 4th UK title 10-2 last night. In the first session yesterday, Ronnie blew away and whitewashed Stephen Maguire 8-0 who looked completely out of sorts. It wasn't superlative snooker from Ronnie, most of the time he needed a couple of chances to win a frame. Maguire failed to take his chances and came increasingly and visibly frustrated as the match progressed. I think Maguire was probably happy when the first session was over.

Maguire took the first frame of the second session with a break of 99, he missed a simple blue for the century. Ronnie responded in great style by knocking in a 126, then Maguire made a 57 break and Ronnie rounded off the match with a 94 break. So Maguire looked to have found some form in the second session but a comeback was almost an impossible task with Ronnie in such good form.

This is Ronnie's first ranking event since March 2005 when he won the Irish Masters. It is worth noting that he won the Masters this year as well as the Premier League though, so it's not like he hasn't been playing well enough to win titles. This also puts Ronnie provisionally number 1 in the world with Stephen Maguire provisionally number 2, both players leapfrogging Shaun Murphy.

It's great to see Ronnie winning a ranking event again and he's come a long way from walking out of the UK Championship in York last year. The O'Sullivan camp looked very happy with his partner Jo and their daughter Lily getting in on the photo action at the presentation.

The next tournament is the Masters at Wembley in January, and the next ranking event is the Welsh Open in February.