How it unfolded
46-year-old Ronnie O'Sullivan reached the final against Judd Trump, sixteen years his junior. The two dominated the match in different ways. Trump created several threatening spells with his trademark bold long potting, but O'Sullivan kept pulling the momentum back each time with precise safety play and steady break-building. O'Sullivan won 18-13, taking a seventh world title, joint with Stephen Hendry for the most in the Crucible era. The win also made him, at 46, the oldest Crucible champion, surpassing the record Ray Reardon had set at 45 in 1978. In his post-match interview, O'Sullivan spoke about the marathon training and diet management he had used to maintain top-level fitness at his age, saying much of the win owed as much to conditioning as to on-table performance.
Why it still matters
This win proved again that age is not a ceiling on top-level competitiveness in snooker. Matching Hendry's record, O'Sullivan then pulled ahead on every other measure, effectively settling the greatest-of-all-time debate, and the fact that a player past 40 could keep competing at the top also raised expectations for the later careers of John Higgins and Mark Williams.