On February 28, 2022, Beijing time, the snooker European Masters came to an end, and the champion big favorite O'Sullivan lost to Fan Zhengyi 9-10, missing the championship, and the official used a super big cold to describe this game, just like O'Sullivan lost to Jordan Brown last season, which was surprising. Losing this final, world champion O'Sullivan can be said to have suffered heavy losses, at least 4 aspects of the blow.
Why is O'Sullivan a favourite to win the title? Because he has always maintained a strong competitiveness, even at the age of 46, he is still the top master of this stage, as long as he participates in the competition, he is recognized as a big favorite to win the championship. In this European Masters, several other winning favourites Trump, Neil Robertson, Higgins and Selby were all out early, and O'Sullivan remained stable.
From the qualifying round to the final, O'Sullivan did not meet the top 16 players in the world rankings, and he was certainly a favorite to win the championship. Before the final, O'Sullivan scored a total of 9 shots to break the hundred, almost every game is the state of crushing the opponent, coupled with the lack of experience of the final opponent Fan Zhengyi, the overall strength can not be compared with O'Sullivan, O'Sullivan is of course the favorite to win the championship.
But why did O'Sullivan lose to Van? When O'Sullivan lost to Jordan Brown, we also analyzed it, and there were three main factors:
First of all, O'Sullivan's offensive state suddenly declined, the previous 6 games of 11 6 wins combined to play 9 hundred, and this final is a 19-game 10-win system, O'Sullivan only played a one-shot breaker, plus a 80+, the offensive fluency is greatly reduced, and the ability to score consecutive points is not displayed. Another point is that the success rate of the long platform is very low, which makes O'Sullivan unable to launch an effective attack, but leaves Fan Zhengyi with many opportunities.
Secondly, the quality of the defense has dropped greatly, from the official statistics, O'Sullivan's defensive data is not as good as Fan Zhengyi, against Liang Wenbo, O'Sullivan played a suffocating defense, the final was almost not seen.
Third, it is said that Fan Zhengyi will be very nervous when he plays the final for the first time, but judging from Fan Zhengyi's performance in the decider, he is more calm and mature. On the contrary, O'Sullivan is a little nervous or anxious, of course, you can also describe O'Sullivan as not caring or casual. To take a simple example: on a few occasions when there was a simple stick-on defense, O'Sullivan made a mistake, too casually.
Of course, all this can be summed up in O'Sullivan's sluggish state, after all, he is 46 years old, his energy is indeed not as good as before, and he seems to have more than enough and insufficient strength in consecutive games, and finally lost to Fan Zhengyi.
The defeat left O'Sullivan devastated on four fronts. First, he missed the opportunity to win the 39th title in the rankings, and now O'Sullivan can't take advantage of Neil Robertson, Trump, Higgins, Selby and others, but this time he didn't meet too strong opponents, but missed the championship. Second, he missed a great opportunity to return to the world number one. Third, in the European series prize money list, he lost a good opportunity to reach the top, and the next competition for additional prize money is very difficult. Fourth, in the final, he was defeated by world number 81 Jordan Brown and 80th place Fan Zhengyi, leaving an embarrassing record!