‘I play against Ronnie O’Sullivan and Judd Trump – it’s clear who is harder to beat’

believes is more difficult to play against than despite the latter being widely regarded as the greatest of all time.Both players have shown they are capable of beating almost anyone but Trump has fared better than O’Sullivan at this week’s UK Championship.He will play in the semi-finals on Saturday after blitzing Zhang Anda in the quarters, while O’Sullivan was knocked out in the first round having slipped to a surprise defeat at the hands of Barry Hawkins.Robertson knows both players well, having faced Trump on 41 occasions and O’Sullivan another 34 times. He boasts a better record against Trump, with his win rate standing at 41 per cent, but is adamant the Bristol native is the harder player to beat.

Reflecting on his defeat to Trump in the opening round of the UK Championship, Robertson posted on : “Judd’s all-round game is incredible and most of our matches are tight affairs.”Pundits who aren’t involved in these types of matches have no clue how hard he is to break down. There has never been a harder player to beat in our sport, period.”The conditions played a huge part for both us which lead to the frames being the way they were. Judd and I could play all out attack but at that point we are both tossing a coin who is going to win 6-1 or 6-2.”In general for me I had to establish being really hard to beat again (which I’ve done) as I was way too attacking the last two seasons and was getting picked off.”The fluency will come back, but having the base first to be hard to get chances against was the priority.”

Trump rattled off five successive frames to beat Robertson and send the Aussie packing his bags in the very first round. After the match, .Robertson suggested the general standard of play was impacted by the unpredictable surface, saying: “Basic positional shots flying off the cushions, going two feet too far, has sort of been a bit of a pattern this week.”I don’t think the standard has been very good because of that. It was just a really, really tough game for both of us.”Trump, meanwhile, added: “The cushions were just very, very bouncy, very heavy, so it was very hard to stop the white. Every time you hit the ball it would go near a cushion and it’s tough because it gets you down.”