O'Sullivan and Selby even after first session of Welsh final

Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby battled for more than three hours before ending the first session of the Welsh Open final deadlocked at 4-4.

That left both players requiring five more frames to claim the first world-ranking silverware of the year and collect the £35,000 (€46,761) first prize in Newport.

O’Sullivan began the contest as favourite – despite Selby’s success at the Saga Masters last month – but his patience was stretched to the limit.

When he was not at the table the unpredictable twice world champion could be seen drawing random patterns on a piece of paper.

It was not unlike their UK Championship semi-final in December when, before claiming the deciding frame of a 9-8 victory with a 147 break, O’Sullivan occupied his time by bizarrely counting the dots on a spoon.

Rarely has O’Sullivan been involved in a slower-moving final as methodical Selby tried his best to dictate the pace against ’the Rocket’.

Selby, beaten in three of his four previous meetings with O’Sullivan, compiled a 77 break in the first frame then produced a 39 clearance to steal the second on the black for 2-0.

O’Sullivan finally came to life with a run of 50 in the third and drew level at 2-2 heading into the mid-session interval with a clearance to blue in the fourth having laid a clever snooker on the last red.

Those opening four frames took an hour and 34 minutes to complete and the exchanges remained equally bogged down on the restart.

During the fifth, which Selby won thanks primarily to a 51 break, O’Sullivan was twice spied mouthing ’I’m bored’ to someone in the arena.

However, given his history of imploding in such tactical marathons, O’Sullivan did well to retain sufficient patience and concentration to secure an extremely scrappy sixth frame that dragged on for 32 minutes on the brown.

Indeed, there was further stalemate as both the seventh and eighth frames were re-racked by referee Eirian Williams after a tactical impasse in both.

When they actually got going, each of the afternoon’s closing two frames featured sizeable contributions – 75 and 60 from Selby to regain the advantage at 4-3, 108 from O’Sullivan to tie up the scores heading into the concluding session.

While Selby is attempting to win his first world ranking event, O’Sullivan is looking for his 20th – a milestone only previously reached by Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis.

After triumphing at the UK Championship in December, O’Sullivan is also bidding to complete back-to-back world-ranking tournament victories for the third time in his career.