Going by his social media offerings throughout this snooker off season, Ronnie O’Sullivan is living the good life. His Instagram profile offers glimpses of passions for cooking, travelling, sparring, and of course running. He has performed live cookery demonstrations with nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert, held video chats with random fans, busked in the streets of Wexford while revelling in the rare delight of a sunny tour of Ireland, with the little bits of snooker thrown in a gentle reminder that this is still the account of perhaps the most gifted player ever to pick up a cue.

O’Sullivan’s well worn mantra over the last few years has been that snooker is not the be-all and end-all, but rather a happy additive to the many other ventures the 42 year-old has explored like a child in awe at the bright blue world around him. He has the publication of his own cookbook on the horizon, along with the airing of season two of his pool/travel programme with friend and broadcaster Matt Smith. The approaching snooker season feels almost insignificant when placed against the substantiality of Ronnie’s rollercoaster summer of sunshine and new experience.

But perhaps the recent news that O’Sullivan has decided to join the increasing number of players implementing Stephen Feeney’s famous, or indeed infamous, Sight Right method, offers a fleeting glimpse beyond Ronnie’s bright and breezy public persona. O’Sullivan is a player riding the crest of a wave, on and off the table, but it’s clear that still he feels the need to change something, that he can extract even more success from the seemingly endless reserves of talent within him. It’s worth remembering that O’Sullivan enjoyed the most successful season of his career in 2017/18, winning five ranking tournaments while banking almost a million pounds in prize money, so the decision to alter his methods feels somewhat odd.

Mark Williams is Sight Right’s greatest advocate, and having won the World Championship in April at the age of 43, one can see the appeal for a player like O’Sullivan who is now entering his 27th season as a professional. Although Ronnie has enjoyed sustained success in recent years, the reality is that age will eventually catch up with him. Sight Right is undoubtedly a method suited to the older snooker player — the refined, exact way of lining up shots an antidote to the gradual degeneration of nerve and instinctive reflex experienced by players as they enter the autumn of their careers. Could it be that this decision to adopt Sight Right is O’Sullivan’s attempt to give himself a safety net for when his natural fluid game is no longer enough?

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from O’Sullivan’s decision is that the defeat to Ali Carter at the World Championship in April clearly still rankles within him. If there has been one chink in O’Sullivan’s snooker chainmail in recent seasons it’s been his Crucible performances. The long, often arduous nature of World Championship matches has seen O’Sullivan become frustrated and frequently bested, and perhaps this venture into new ideas is an attempt to regain a foothold at snooker’s showpiece event. After all, if Mark Williams, a player on the brink of retirement the year before, who had fallen out of love with the game that made him, cites Sight Right as the reason for his remarkable World Championship triumph, then who can blame Ronnie for wanting a piece of that action.

If there’s one thing we can deduce, it’s that beneath the photos of Thai green curries, the houseboat tours, and the sparring sessions, Ronnie O’Sullivan is still a snooker player fiercely determined to be the best. In his press conference following that defeat to Carter in Sheffield, he laid out to the media all the wonderful things he had lined up now that his Crucible challenge had ended, but the pain of defeat was visible in his eyes. O’Sullivan is his sport’s main attraction, the King Kong of snooker’s broadway, and this easy going facade he portrays is his own way, perhaps the only way, of dealing with the pressure that brings. But his adoption of Sight Right represents a stab at reaching new heights, a steely determination to surpass feats that only he himself has accomplished. It’s a technique and method revered and contemned in equal measure by snooker players, its intricacies vague and inscrutable in the eyes of many — an accurate reflection, perhaps, of its latest disciple.