Judd Trump has warned Ronnie O’Sullivan that he intends to keep on racking up wins with the World Championship on the horizon.
The 34-year-old is in sensational form ahead of tackling the Crucible next month. He claimed the World Open title on Sunday with a 10-4 thumping of favourite Ding Junhui.
He secured an eye-watering £170,000 pay day in the process. It was the 28th ranking title of his career and it now puts him level with O’Sullivan at the top of the 2024 stakes.
And he has no intention of taking his foot off the gas ahead of next month’s World Championship – where he will try to win his first title since 2019. Speaking after his success in China, Trump said: “The magnificent seven is on!
I’ve put myself in an amazing position this season. I’ve now got a mindset where I want to win and I don’t punish myself when I miss easy balls like a lot of other players do.
“It’s taken me a long time to get to this headspace, but it’s working really well for me. This season’s been so good that if I didn’t win another game it’s been an amazing season. But I want to keep winning with a couple of big events left.”
Trump is not the only one of O’Sullivan’s rivals to have sent him a strong warning ahead of the World Championship. His long-term foe Ali Carter also has ambitions of lifting the title in Sheffield.
Speaking to the WST Podcast, the current world number eight said: “When I played at the Masters back in January, I was telling myself I was going to win that event. Rather than telling yourself, you’re going to lose or someone is going to beat you, why not tell yourself you are going to win it? I played really great stuff all week.
“That reminded me that I am a top player because to play well in that atmosphere, that environment, you have to have something about you. I know I didn’t win it but we had a really good game in the final, I made the most centuries I’ve ever made and that’s ever been made there.
“If I can take that form into the crucible, with that attitude, then I think with the sort of game that I’ve got, I could be dangerous. Whether I win the World Championship or not, it doesn’t matter, I believe this year, probably for the first time, I could win it.
“Obviously we’d all like to break build like Ronnie, of course, we would. But there’s more than one way to go about this game and as good as Ronnie O’Sullivan is, he doesn’t win every tournament – he pretty much does at the minute, the ones he enters – so there’s room for other players to win.”