Summary Ronnie O'Sullivan raced into a 7-1 lead against Mark Selby in the Masters snooker tournament final.
LONDON (AFP) - Ronnie O Sullivan raced into a 7-1 lead against defending champion Mark Selby in the final of the Masters snooker tournament on Sunday.
World champion O Sullivan now just needs three more frames to win his fifth Masters title when the match resumes later Sunday at London s Alexandra Palace.
The 38-year-old raced into a 5-0 lead against fellow Englishman Selby, himself a three-time Masters champion.
O Sullivan rattled off the first three frames with breaks of 97, 70 and 96 before taking a scrappy fourth, the last before the mid-session interval.
The break did little to interrupt O Sullivan s flow as he took the fifth frame before Selby spared himself the embarrassment of a whitewash by winning the sixth.
However, O Sullivan took the seventh on a re-spotted black, having been 35 points behind with 35 left on the table before pouncing on a poor safety by Selby.
O Sullivan, in a record tenth Masters final, then duly won the final frame of the session.
One consolation for Selby is that a six-frame deficit in a Masters final has been overturned before, with the late Paul Hunter coming back from 7-1 down to beat O Sullivan 10-9 in 2004.
