Ronnie O’Sullivan has been branded the most intimidating player in snooker by one of his rivals, who claimed to have been on the receiving end of his ‘very aggressive’ manner both at the table and away from it. Veteran player Dominic Dale, who turned professional at the same time as O’Sullivan in 1992, has gone toe to toe with the ‘Rocket’ on 12 occasions where he felt the full force of the 49-year-old’s strong personality. The Welsh star conceded he felt unnerved when he faced the seven-time world champion because of his ability to seize upon mistakes.
Speaking on the Snooker Scene podcast, Dale said: “Ronnie’s the only player that I can ever say I found intimidating to play against. Not just his style of play, because he can wipe you off the table in no time. It’s just because he’s such a character. He’s a very aggressive person, Ronnie. In life generally, as well as on the table, and you feel that. It comes through when you’re playing him and you’re sat in your chair. If you make a mistake and he makes an 80-odd [break] in no time at all, it is frightening.
“You think, ‘jeez, I can do this on the practice table, probably at half the speed, but I’m never likely to play with this much freedom in a match’ and he can really embarrass you.
“All of a sudden he can make a difficult game look impossible. You can be 3-0 down in no time, playing Ronnie, and all of a sudden a black off the spot becomes 10 times harder. It’s very intimidating.”
O’Sullivan dominated their head-to-head battles since their first meeting during qualifying for the 1993 World Championship. Since then, he has won all but one of their showdowns, on his way to becoming one of the greatest players to grace the game.
Dale, 53, has two titles to his name and peaked at 19th in the world rankings in 2000. He claimed his only success over his long-time rival at the World Open in China back in 2019 and admitted that it took him a long time to overcome the psychological obstacle of caving to O’Sullivan’s fear factor.
“It took me a long, long time to get over the intimidatory factor that Ronnie always has,” he added. “It’s only the last five or six times I’ve played Ronnie, that I’ve actually played the player and not the person.
“I have beaten him in China and I’ve lost a couple of close matches and it’s nice to play a little bit against him because sometimes I have played Ronnie and just been completely inept because I’ve been completely overawed playing him.”
