By Felix Keith
Ronnie O’Sullivan said he had been battling the instinct to delve into the “horrible murky world ” of over-thinking his game after beating Gary Wilson to reach yet another final.
O’Sullivan beat the Scottish and Welsh Open champion 10-7 in Manchester on Friday night to book a 64th ranking final of his remarkable career. The Rocket will play the winner of Mark Williams vs Mark Allen on Sunday in the final of the Johnstone's Paint Tour Championship – his sixth tour final of the season.
He looks in fine form ahead of his bid to win a record eighth title at the World Championship later this month. But the 48-year-old said his victory had been far from straightforward and he has been working hard with his sports psychiatrist Steve Peters to master the mental side of the game.
“I am just trying really hard to not get down on myself,” O’Sullivan told ITV Sport. “It is hard but I am trying to change my mindset. It is not easy, but maybe two weeks ago I’d have mentally thrown in the towel because I was not flowing but I just thought keep going, keep going and focus on the positives that might be around the corner.”
On his relationship with Peters, who he started working with in 2011, O’Sullivan added: “I’ve been speaking to him every day, three times a day, sometimes four times a day. I have just got to commit to it now for a good year to try and get myself out of this hole I have got myself in mentally, with the obsession with the game and tinkering.
“I know I am never going to stop tinkering but I have to somehow get my head strong enough to be able to deal with it and not go too deep into the horrible murky world.”
O’Sullivan has already earned over £1million in winnings this season and is showing no signs of slowing down ahead of a return to the Crucible in a few weeks. He has won Triple Crown events at the UK Championship and The Masters as well as the World Grand Prix, Shanghai Masters and World Masters of Snooker, despite suffering from “the yips”.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Will Ronnie O'Sullivan win another World Championship later this month? .
"Golfers, tennis players, snooker players, darts, we all do it. I went so deep into it it is like detoxing myself from it,” he explained. “It is not going to happen straight away so if I want to get out of it I have got to put the work in.
“It has kind of felt like I had the yips, mentally, physically, you get scared to want to go and play and that is not a nice place to be. There is nothing left to do other than get myself out of it and hopefully my game will start to flow again.”
