October 8, 2001	Monday	Rajab 20, 1422

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NEWCASTLE (England), Oct 7: World champion Ronnie O’Sullivan crashed out of the British Open here Saturday, then admitted: “I’m happy to get beaten.”

O’Sullivan suffered a shock 6-4 semifinal defeat against Scotland’s Graeme Dott and was so frustrated by his performance that he could hardly wait to get out of the arena.

“I’m happy to get beaten. If I went to sleep tonight thinking that I might play like that again in the final you would probably find me hanging from the Newcastle bridge,” said the enigmatic world No 2 afterwards.

Dott is now through to his second ranking final in his first tournament as a top 16 player. He was beaten 9-1 by Stephen Hendry in the final of the 1999 Regal Scottish in Aberdeen.

O’Sullivan conceded two frames with enough balls left on the table to win them.

He was level at 4-4 but his heart was simply not in it and when he snookered himself on the final red in the tenth frame, it was time to go home.

Dott now meets Higgins in the first all-Scottish ranking since March, 1999, when Higgins beat Billy Snaddon 9-3 in the China International.

The first to nine frames will pocket a £92,500 first prize. Higgins leads 5-1 in career meetings, including a 10-4 victory in the first round of this year’s Embassy World Championship.

No player has ever won the first three tournaments of the season but Higgins has given himself a chance of just achieving that after whitewashing Mark King 6-0 in the second semifinal.

The 26-year Scot, who won the Champions Cup in Brighton in August, and the Regal Masters in Glasgow last month, is also chasing a hat trick of British Open titles having won the world ranking in event in 1995 and 1998.

Higgins had every right to be confident goind into Sunday’s final. Not only he is playing some of the best snooker of his nine-year career but he had also beaten beaten King eight times in their previous nine meetings.

That record included a 5-0 win in the 1997 Grand Prix when King scored only 11 points in five frames - the lowest tally in a televised match. King, ranked 13th in the world, needed a good start to put his opponent

Results

Quarterfinals: Mark King (Eng) bt Peter Ebdon (Eng) 5-0 Graeme Dott (Scot) bt Ali Carter (Eng) 5-3 Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) bt Alan McManus (Scot) 5-1 John Higgins (Scot) bt Stephen Lee (Eng) 5-4

Semifinals: John Higgins (Scot) bt Mark King (Eng) 6-0 Graeme Dott (Scot) bt Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) 6-4.