Ronnie O’Sullivan’s tip flies off yet again in Welsh Open match against Rod Lawler – ‘You could not make this up!’

All was looking good for O’Sullivan until the third frame when he was on a break to go 3-0 up.

As he potted the black to move onto a break of 35, O’Sullivan’s tip came off for a third time this week in Llandudno.

“Oh my God,” reacted O’Sullivan.

He said to referee Desislava Bozhilova: “I can’t play if my cue is broken.”

She replied: “Do you want to go and change it?”

“I want to play it,” O’Sullivan continued. “I know they will fix it. But it will keep coming off.”

Eurosport commentators Philip Studd and Alan McManus were also stunned by what they were seeing, especially given there had been no issues in the opening two frames.

“Dear oh dear, you could not make it up,” said Studd.

“This is what O’Sullivan would have been scared about coming into this match.”

McManus added: “It’s brittle underneath. You can’t keep replacing it because the air lock has been broken, eventually it will ping off again.

“You have got to go and put on a brand new tip and do it properly. It will take 10 or 15 minutes but it can be done.

“It might be a rush to get a new one on but you can do it in 10 minutes. It won’t be pristine but it will be playable.”

That’s what O’Sullivan did as he went to get a new tip that was put on by tournament director Paul Collier.

Neal Foulds had sympathy for both players but was clear that putting a new tip on, or playing with a different cue, was the only thing to do.

“It’s not anyone’s fault this,” he said in the Eurosport studio. “There’s nothing worse. Ronnie looks really fed up and I would. When your tip comes off it’s just no good, no fun.

“The only answer is, you give them 15 minutes and at the end of that you have to use a different cue.

“You can’t have intermittent breaks of 15 minutes because what happens if it happens in the final, what happens to the TV people, to Eurosport or anyone else who covers it. You can’t have those breaks because it’s dull.”

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