Ronnie O’Sullivan loses frame after wild foul at Welsh Open – ‘He just whacked it’, says stunned commentator

Ronnie O’Sullivan briefly lost control during an extraordinary moment at the 2023 Welsh Open, conceding a frame after wildly falling foul of the three-miss rule.

Leading 3-2 in his best-of-seven encounter with Ross Muir in Llandudno, O’Sullivan had already missed twice when referee Luise Kraatz informed him that he would lose the sixth frame if he did not hit a red with his next shot.

O’Sullivan immediately asked “why?”, prompting Kraatz to walk around the table and point to a red perched below the pink, which was partially obscured by another red. Under the three-miss rule, frames are lost if a player does not hit a legal ball when not snookered – and Kraatz deemed O’Sullivan was not snookered.

What followed was astonishing.

O’Sullivan got down quickly on his next shot and, after spending the briefest time eyeing it up, blasted the white into the pack – hitting the pink first, sending the other balls crashing around the table and the cue ball flying off onto the arena floor.

“Wow, he’s just whacked it,” said David Hendon on Eurosport commentary.

The referee was initially unsure what ball had been hit first but after O’Sullivan confessed it was the pink, Kraatz awkwardly handed the frame to Muir to tee up a decider at 3-3.

“He just whacked it and hit the pink, not the red,” continued Hendon. “Just when you think you’ve seen everything. Extraordinary way for the frame to end.”

The Eurosport studio was in complete disbelief.

“It’s the three strikes and out rule,” said Neal Foulds. “To be fair, the referee did well there. Ronnie barely looked at the last one [shot], I don’t know if he wasn’t pleased with the decision.

“There’s only one bit of good news is that the cue ball didn’t kill anybody. Other than that it’s all bad if you’re an O’Sullivan fan. But no one got hurt. We’re all still alive and we’ve got a deciding frame…”

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