This year’s Champion of Champions event will have a new winner after defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan withdrew his invite for next month’s tournament.
Ronnie O’Sullivan. Picture by Monique Limbos
World Snooker announced the five-times world champion’s withdrawal of the ITV event earlier today.
O’Sullivan has won each of the tournament’s two events beating Stuart Bingham in the 2013 final and Judd Trump in last year’s final.
He will be replaced by the highest ranked player on the world rankings after the conclusion of the International Championship who has not already been seeded into a group.
O’Sullivan’s withdrawal comes less than a week after organisers initially announced he would be competing in the 2015 event at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena.
But O’Sullivan was quick to play down his involvement in the tournament when he tweeted last week: “I don’t want fans buying tickets for Coventry thinking I’m playing. I said I hadn’t entered weeks ago. Nothing’s changed.”
It forced organisers to change O’Sullivan’s name in the draw to ‘TBC’ (to be confirmed).
Snooker Chat 
He has not “pulled out”, he has declined the invitation, he never entered. That’s not the same thing. And, yes, fans were made to believe he would be there when his name appeared in the draw but not because of Ronnie who was clear on twitter already weeks again regarding the fact that he had not entered the event. WSA and Matchroom communication was misleading and that’s not right.