'I don’t think any player has ever got the better of me': Ronnie O'Sullivan on being the best in the world, why he can play until he is 55, and his next trick • Ronnie O'Sullivan has had 'no better feeling' than being at the top of his game • The five-time world champion tells Sportsmail why he is so consistent • He has considered taking up hobbies including go-karting and Nordic skiing • O'Sullivan will play Stuart Bingham in the first round of the Masters on Monday By Published: 22:31 GMT, 9 January 2019 Updated: 17:19 GMT, 11 January 2019. Ronnie O'Sullivan is usually his own harshest critic. But the tortured king of snooker seems less tormented nowadays, with the pursuit of perfection not as painful as it was. It is refreshing to hear O’Sullivan, 43, who is normally quicker to praise his contemporaries, speak about those moments when he is at the top of his game.

‘It’s fantastic! There is no better feeling,’ he says. Microsoft outlook enterprise vault. ‘I feel like I have an answer for anything that my opponent might bring to the table — whether that’s good safety, or good break-building, or good potting. ‘I just know that they have to continue doing what they’re good at to a very high level for a very long time to have a chance to beat me. And they might beat me.

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But I’ll be coming for you the next week. 'And I’ll be coming for you the week after. So keep bringing your A game. At the end of their career most players will say, “Well, I didn’t really get the better of Ronnie”. And that’s all you can do as a sportsman.’ At 17, O’Sullivan saw off Stephen Hendry to win the 1993 UK Championship, thanks to sublime talent and an infectious personality, and has dominated snooker for more than 25 years. ‘I’ve had to play different eras and players.

Some players will come along for five years and everyone will be saying, “Oh they’re going to be great”. And then I’ll have to deal with them. ‘And then it will be another batch and then I’d have five years of them. And then another batch of players. Because they can’t sustain it. They can’t sustain it for 25 years.

‘I don’t think there’s any pro who has ever played in my era who can honestly say that they got the better of me, really,’ he says nonchalantly between sips of lemon and ginger tea. So how has he done it? ‘You have to reinvent yourself sometimes,’ he continues. ‘You have to look round and say, “There are players out there doing stuff better than I am”. I want to try to get that into my game.’. Aged just 17, O’Sullivan defeated Stephen Hendry to win the 1993 UK Championship O’Sullivan, who watched and learned as heroes such as Jimmy White, Steve Davis and Hendry became opponents, had a close eye on Mark Williams last year. Aged 43, the Welshman won his third World Championship in May, 15 years after his last Crucible victory.

Williams credited Steve Feeney’s SightRight stable with advances in his game and this was not lost on O’Sullivan, who joined the programme in July. ‘I noticed Mark had got more compact and that was a consequence of changing his alignment,’ says O’Sullivan. ‘I was always interested in someone who can compact everything that they can do. When I’m playing my best I feel compact and tight so I thought I would give it a go.