RONNIE O’SULLIVAN’S master cue maker has an EIGHT-YEAR waiting list.
And fans often have to wait for around a year, before forking out around £3000-per-cue from the South London-based workshop.
The world renowned craftsman, who is snooker’s answer to wand-maker Garrick Ollivander, is Londoner John Parris.
And O’Sullivan isn’t the only famous snooker star on Parris’ 40-year client list.
Six-time world champion Steve Davis, Alex Higgins and the legendary have all been visitors over the years.
But O’Sullivan was forced to put in an SOS call to Parris before the start of the 2025 World Championships last month.
The Rocket, 49, was struggling to find a replacement after and chucking it in the bin at the Championship League in January.
And to make matters worse O’Sullivan has been this week, labelling it as “awful”;.
But master cue craftsman Parris has opened up about his relationship with O’Sullivan this week.
Parris, 73, told the BBC: “O’Sullivan is not settled. I’m not sure what cue he’s coming out with every time he comes through the curtain.
“It could be a different one every day. He’s not happy with it but he’s managing. We’ll get there – we’ll get the perfect one in the end.”;
Parris first designed a cue for when the upcoming prodigy was just 11 years old.
And he and his 14 staff members are now halfway through the nine-month process of crafting what they hope will be O’Sullivan’s next long-term cue.
Parris said: “He doesn’t change cues very often but he is always saying ‘well make me another one just to see if it could be that little bit better’.
“So we normally have one or two on the go somewhere in the background. As I’m going through shafts I’ll think ‘Ronnie might like this one’ and I’ll put it to one side for him.”;
O’Sullivan in-between breaking his cue and deciding to fight for a record eighth world title in Sheffield.
He added: “It was a bit heart breaking when Ronnie broke that last one.
“It was just a tantrum, a rush of blood. It happens I guess. It takes a lot for Ronnie to do that.
“He has got a lot of pressure on him. Everybody wants a piece of him.
“Sometimes if it’s a clean break you can put it back together again.
“But this was a real job! It was never going to work. So you just have to say ‘oh well, here we go again’.”;
Parris travels to timber yards across the country and searches through stockpiles of wood looking for high-quality pieces of ash and maple.
in World Championship semi-final on Friday.
