Ronnie O’Sullivan has won the Masters eight times but pulled out of this year’s tournament (Image: GETTY)
could be hurtling towards the end of his snooker career, with ally raising doubts over the 49-year-old’s future in the game. The Rocket was days before the tournament was due to get underway on medical grounds.
O’Sullivan opted not to play his final Championship League group game last week after smashing his cue on the table during his defeat to Robert Milkins.
And he withdrew from the Masters ahead of his opening match against John Higgins, with his replacement Neil Robertson going on to beat the Scot.
The Masters has reached the quarter-finals stage, with Trump taking on Ding Junhui in his last-eight match.
And ahead of the showdown, the Bristol-born star gave his verdict on O’Sullivan as he explained: “Because Ronnie is starting to miss more events, people realise that they might not see him that much longer.
“Maybe now is the time to appreciate what you have taken for granted for the last 20 or 30 years. When he’s missing an event, everyone notices.
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Judd Trump has issued his say on Ronnie O’Sullivan’s future in snooker (Image: GETTY)
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“You’re probably looking at the last five years of knuckling down and going for it. To be honest, it could be any point where one more World Championship and maybe he calls it a day.”
Trump then claimed that O’Sullivan’s powers appear to be on the wane, with rivals sensing an opportunity to defeat the seven-time world champion when they come up against him.
The 35-year-old added: “He maybe doesn’t have the same intimidating factor that he had. A lot more players are able to beat him. The world will always move on – there will always be other players coming through.”
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O’Sullivan has won the Masters a record eight times and was one of the favourites to lift the trophy once again this time around. But discussing his decision to pull out of the tournament, he told Eurosport: “It was nightmare decision to make.
“If you’d asked me Sunday was I ready to play, then I probably would have been okay to play. But it’s such a massive tournament and I’d obviously been on this three-week trip away playing, and I think I just exhausted myself.
“There was a lot of pressure while I was away and the build-up of all that just got a bit too much really. So I lost the plot on Thursday, snapped my cue – so that’s unplayable. So yeah, I just knew that at this moment in time the right decision was to not play.”