SELBY’S EYES ON HISTORY MAN HENDRY
MARK SELBY crushed bitter rival Ronnie O’Sullivan to retain the Stephen Hendry Trophy last night – and match one of the Scot’s pieces of history.
The Leicester Jester was all smiles after successfully defending his Scottish Open title in its temporary home of Milton Keynes.
And he has now won six of the nine finals fought out with reigning and six-time world champion O’Sullivan after handing out a 9-3 beating.
The match had an undercurrent of bad feeling – a hangover from an epic Crucible semi-final in August won by O’Sullivan (below) but ending with Selby calling him “disrespectful”.
World No.3 O’Sullivan, 45, accused Selby of trying to put him off drinking his water and was told by the referee not to play on with the frame finished.
O’Sullivan has experienced nothing like this drubbing in a best-of-17 frame final since going down 9-2 to John Higgins at the 2005 Grand Prix.
He did not even manage to push the showpiece into and beyond an evening session interval.
But Selby has now won 11 ranking finals in a row going back to the 2016 International Championship – something Hendry did between 1993 and 1997. 7
Selby, after winning a 19th ranking title to go level with Judd Trump, said: “I was trying that extra bit tonight with the Stephen Hendry record at stake and there to be equalled.
“I said things after the World Championship as that’s what I felt, and I have said a couple of things this week – whenever Ronnie didn’t play well he blamed the tip or the cue action or something.
“Ronnie tried to carry on at the end in frame four as he has been doing recently but the ref told him he had ended the frame. But he’s been doing that to everyone, not just me.
“On the water bottle, I went for a drink when he wasn’t even down to play, he was standing up. It was similar to what he did to Mark Allen recently.
“I’ll always stand up to him. If he wants to ruffle feathers we are too long in the tooth and probably about the worst two players to try that with.”
O’Sullivan said: “When he started doing that with the water bottle I thought ‘I might as well pull you up’. But look, we drive each other on.
“And I like playing on until the end of the frame now, I’d rather have a safety battle with him on the colours for practice but he kept pushing them over the holes.”