Ronnie O’Sullivan crashed out of the Northern Ireland Open as part-time artist David Grace produced a career masterpiece.
World No 1 and reigning and seven-time world champion O’Sullivan was sensationally beaten 4-3 in Belfast by world No 49 Grace. The Rocket had led 2-0 and looked to be cruising through to the last 32 – but Grace produced a superb comeback and held his nerve in a tense decider.
It was one of the biggest wins in the 37-year-old Grace’s career, with the player twice having fallen off the professional tour. His only previous meeting with O’Sullivan saw him thrashed 4-0 in the 2018 Welsh Open, a contest that saw him score just 13 points in total.
A lot more recently Grace painted a portrait of the snooker legend as a commission, one of many of the game’s best-known players he has represented on canvas. But it was O’Sullivan that followed world No 2 Judd Trump out of the draw after the Juddernaut’s shock loss to Aaron Hill on Tuesday.
Grace, a former semi-finalist at the UK Championship, said: “It is the biggest single win of my career, because he is so hard to put away in front of a big crowd. It is always up there and a massive occasion playing Ronnie. The last time didn’t go too well, so this one was nicer.
“The difference this time to that one was that he gave me a lot more chances. Last time he never missed, and he missed quite a few today. The painting of Ronnie was probably the last one I did last summer, it was from when he won his sixth world title with the trophy. But I don’t get so much time to do it these days.”
Keen runner O’Sullivan was watch by Irish middle distance track legend and three-time Olympian Eamonn Coghlan, but could not deliver him a win. He said: “David deserved to win. I can’t even begin to analyse my games these days but I’m out and look forward to doing some other bits and pieces. I feel very neutral about everything now which is a nice place to be.
"Eamonn was in there watching today, the ‘King of the Boards’. He is a friend of a friend and wanted to come and watch," he continued. "Would it have been nice to win for him? I just don’t care enough these days. As long as I do one good tournament a year, I’ll be all right. That’s enough, the rest is complete garbage. I don’t really care and the gig ain’t worth the stress, and the sport gets what it deserves.”
O’Sullivan had opened up an early 2-0 lead helped by a break of 64 in the opener – but Grace had chances to take both of those frames. And the Leeds player showed his mettle by responding with an excellent fightback, making breaks of 57, 94 and 64.
