Hendry backs O'Sullivan to end ranking drought despite China Open setback

Early exit in Taiyuan extends O'Sullivan's wait to two-and-a-half years

Ronnie O'Sullivan's ranking title drought stretched to two-and-a-half years following a 6-4 second-round defeat to Noppon Saengkham at the 2026 China Open in Taiyuan — yet seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry has gone on record to predict the 50-year-old will still claim a title before the season is out.

O'Sullivan's last ranking success came at the World Grand Prix in early 2024, and the defeat to Saengkham — a player ranked well outside the top tier — pushed him further down the world rankings to 14th, a position that would have been almost unthinkable during his years of near-total dominance. The loss was one O'Sullivan took hard in his post-match press conference, offering a candid and largely unsparing assessment of his own display.

"I'm just very poor," O'Sullivan told reporters afterwards. "Too many bad shots, bad frames, and silly mistakes. I have been like this for four years so I'm used to it, but it's frustrating. I don't want to take anything away from Noppon — he played a really good match, he is cueing strong. I'm just a very poor snooker player at the moment, it's as simple as that."

Hendry's prediction: form will return, at least for a week

Speaking on the Snooker Club podcast following the result, Hendry acknowledged that O'Sullivan's difficulties are part of a broader pattern affecting his generation of champions. The Scot drew parallels with fellow legends John Higgins and Mark Williams, suggesting that unforced errors — rather than any fundamental deterioration in technique — are the common thread undermining all three.

"We've talked about it quite a lot with Ronnie, John, and Mark," Hendry said. "All of a sudden, they'll miss something that you can't believe. It's these little unforced errors and the easy shots that are costing them."

Yet despite that analysis, Hendry stopped short of writing O'Sullivan off for the remainder of the campaign. "I'm going to make a prediction," he continued. "I think Ronnie will win a tournament this year. I think there will be a week where he'll just hit form. We know that at his best he has produced unbelievable performances, and if he can string them together he will win a tournament. I don't know which one, so it's not the greatest of predictions. But I think he will win one, because he seems to be working his nuts off. He's on the practice table all the time. He's pounding the practice table."

A notable shift in tone from Hendry's earlier assessment

What makes Hendry's prediction particularly interesting is that it represents a somewhat rosier outlook than the one he offered on the same podcast only weeks prior. On that earlier occasion, the seven-time world champion painted a more cautious picture of O'Sullivan's current level, describing a player whose game has become defined by sharp contrasts rather than sustained excellence.

"He goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. He can suddenly look absolutely flawless and then go back to really struggling," Hendry said previously. "Ronnie's game now is flashes of brilliance coupled with inconsistent form."

The distinction between those two assessments is a meaningful one. Acknowledging inconsistency is different from predicting a title — and Hendry appears to be betting that O'Sullivan's work ethic on the practice table will eventually translate into a sustained run of form across a full tournament draw. Given that ranking events typically require winning five or six matches across several days, that represents a considerable stretch of consistent performance for a player who, by his own admission, has been struggling for four years.

Context: where O'Sullivan stands historically

For statistical context, O'Sullivan has accumulated 22 ranking titles across his career (CueTracker), a record that remains unmatched on the modern tour. His current drought of two-and-a-half years without a ranking title is, by historical standards, an extended barren run for a player of his calibre — though it is worth noting that gaps of similar length have occurred at other points in his career without signalling permanent decline.

Dropping to 14th in the world rankings (snooker.org) means O'Sullivan now faces a tougher route into the later stages of non-seeded events, potentially compounding the difficulty of the run Hendry is predicting. Whether the Rocket can string together the kind of week his former rival is forecasting remains to be seen, but Hendry's confidence — however cautiously framed — is unlikely to go unnoticed ahead of the remaining events on the 2025/26 calendar.