As the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed, with the help of Adam from the snookerinfo website, this season I am keeping a track of the professional centuries records, which you can find regularly updated at this page here.
While it might differ from the normal lists that I tend to follow in that it does not involve rankings, still there are a number of interesting points arising from it, not least Ronnie O’Sullivan’s pursuit of Stephen Hendry’s current record, which looks set to be bested at some stage this season…
Taking a good look at the page during the past weekend, I found it interesting to note that Judd Trump currently leads the way for 2014/15 with 24 tons, while Mark Selby and last season’s centurion Neil Robertson are also in double figures as you might expect. By comparison, at this stage last season Robertson’s what would ultimately prove to be a record-shattering tally had stood at 28.
Further down the rankings, the heavy scoring Kurt Maflin is also worth keeping an eye on over the coming weeks, as he needs just one more century break to become the 54th player to have made 100 career century breaks, while there are five further players with over 80 competitive tons.
Most notable however is the fact that having been closing in for a number of years now, five-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan now stands just 23 tons behind Stephen Hendry’s record-breaking tally of 775 century breaks and looks certain to overhaul his great rival at some point during the course of this season.
So far this term, Ronnie’s appearances have been limited to just six matches, only two of which have been longer than the now common best of seven format. From those events, he has made four centuries so far, but with upcoming tournaments such as the venue stages of the International Championship, UK Championship and of course the invitational Champion of Champions event on the horizon, O’Sullivan can be expected to make further inroads into that tally.
With a qualifier for the German Masters also due to be played before the end of the year, could it be that the landmark will come at January’s Masters event, an appropriate venue given Ronnie’s successful track record at the London-based event?
Time will tell, but it is very much a case of when, not if and who knows, could he even go on to become the first player to make a thousand professional century breaks? Having made 53 last season it clearly cannot be ruled out, although if he does continue to prioritise his calendar around the very biggest events, perhaps he will find his opportunities to score more limited than in the past.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments section below…