Snooker icon Ronnie O’Sullivan felt compelled to apologise to Barry Hawkins after their surprisingly error-prone match.

The 48-year-old was uncharacteristically error-prone in his quarter-final clash in the Masters against Barry Hawkins on Thursday (January 11) at Alexandra Palace. The Rocket has seven Masters titles – a joint-record number of championships shared with Stephen Hendry – and bids to become the sole owner of one of snooker’s most prestigious records.

While claiming a 6-3 victory to book his place into the semi-final, it was a scrappy match between the pair with O’Sullivan shockingly miscuing a expected pot of the pink with the white ball jumping and completely missing the ball.

is errors caused the crowd to laugh at him and after his win, the snooker legend spoke to Rob Walker and profusely apologised to Hawkins, 44, and called himself “lucky” to get through to the final four.

“I just feel sorry for Barry,” said O’Sullivan. “He was playing good until he started playing me and I just dragged him down to probably the most awful standard of snooker. So I’m really sorry about that today but I’m just lucky to get through is all I can say.”

Fans on social media couldn’t believe what they were watching with many stunned at the poor performance from O’Sullivan with his miscue blunder the highlight of the game. One X (formerly known as Twitter) wrote: “Can’t even remember the last time I saw Ronnie miscue a shot before today.”

Another fan commented: “Who’s swapped Ronnie O’Sullivan for an amateur?” while a third added: “Can’t even remember the last time I saw Ronnie miscue a shot before today.” It’ll be the 48-year-old’s 15th Masters semi-final where he’ll take on the winner of Shaun Murphy vs Jack Lisowski.

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Defending champion Judd Trump has to get through Ali Carter where one of Mark Selby or Mark Allen will be waiting for the Bristol native should he get past The Captain.