"I'm not in pain but my alignment is so out that I have no touch or feel. It feels like my body and cue are so disconnected, I'm having to will the ball in. I am having to grind it out, but it's not easy."
That was snooker great Ronnie O'Sullivan after beating Stuart Bingham to reach the Masters final, which he eventually won against Barry Hawkins in his first major tournament after a nine-month break from the sport.
The 1997 world champion Ken Doherty is not entirely sure about the extent of the alignment problems, given how he annihilated the opposition on the way to a sixth Masters title.
"If he's out of line and his alignment he can't get right, then I must be playing a different game to him because I don't think anybody really takes him completely seriously. Now, I know he has his issues and his problems but the way he played, I've not seen him play that well since he last won the world championship a couple of years ago," Doherty told Off The Ball.
"I really don't know if it's a wind-up. It might be a complete wind-up or he either feels that way in his head and he's just going to go with it. I'm as baffled as everybody else and a little bit, I suppose, I think we just take him for granted now because we've heard it so many times. But I still believe and I just really enjoy watching him play and believe that he brings such a different dimension to our game. It's so great to have him there with the atmosphere and the electricity that he brings. It's good for the sport and creates that mysticism behind him."
Doherty also looked at how O'Sullivan will cope with a tilt at the world title at the Crucible.
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