Ronnie O’Sullivan Left ‘Deeply Ashamed’ After Being Stripped of Title and Money
Ronnie O'Sullivan was left 'deeply ashamed' after being stripped of a title and losing out on tens of thousands of pounds at a time when he was battling difficulties in his personal life.
The seven-time world champion returns to action on Tuesday at the UK Championship - a tournament he has won a record eight times.
It will be the 31st time O'Sullivan has competed in York, with Chinese qualifier Zhou Yuelong his first-round opponent.
Although the Briton has won all seven previous matches with Yuelong, the Chinese player arrives in good form after reaching the English Open final in September.
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Meanwhile, O'Sullivan is without a top flight title since March 2024 and was whitewashed 4-0 by Shaun Murphy in his last match at the Riyadh Snooker Championship.
While there is no suggestion O'Sullivan is considering retirement, he has now played snooker for more than three decades, having made his professional debut aged 16 in 1992.
During much of the early part of his career through the 1990s, he struggled with drug and alcohol abuse.
At the 1998 Irish Masters, he beat Ken Doherty 9-3 in the final to claim the title, earning £61,000 in the process.
However, he was later stripped of that title after traces of cannabis were found in his system following a drugs test.
His solicitor at the time, Gerry Sinclair, said O'Sullivan was "deeply ashamed" by the incident.
In 2000, O'Sullivan entered rehab for help with his addictions and he later told the BBC he lost several years of his career to drink and cannabis.
Earlier this week, he spoke to TNT Sports about his struggles with alcohol and how they affected his career.
Asked what he would change if he could rewrite history, he replied: "It's a nice thing in many ways [to have support] but I don't want people to feel sorry for me either, thinking 'oh, he's had his problems, this, that'.
"That's life, life throws you whatever and you have to deal with it and that's a blessing that we have.
"I haven't always dealt with it, if I could turn the clock back, I would do things so much differently.
"I think I would have not gone a bit wayward when I was 18,19.
"I wish I'd not ventured out into that drinking, partying sort of thing, that way of life.
O'Sullivan continued: "If I could take six, seven years out of my life and do them differently, it would have been from 2019 to 2025.
"I think I caused a lot of damage in those years to my game, which, in effect, caused a lot of damage off the table, that way of life.
"I became quite vulnerable, unconfident."
Topics: Ronnie OSullivan, Snooker
James Taylor