Ronnie O'Sullivan almost tipped over the edge at Welsh Open

Ronnie O'Sullivan claimed he was close to conceding his dramatic second-round match with Ross Muir at the BetVictor Welsh Open after twice losing his tip.

The seven-time world champion overcame the frustrating cue issues and forfeiting a frame due to violating the three-miss rule to scrape into the last 32 with an enthralling 4-3 success.

He had looked set to cruise to victory at Venue Cymru in Llandudno as he began with a superb break of 108.

But his tip flew off when potting the final pink of the first frame and again midway through the second, causing two delays to the match.

Scotsman Muir seized on the disruption to move 2-1 ahead courtesy of a pair of half-century breaks before O'Sullivan seemed to have sufficiently regained his rhythm as he moved back in front with knocks of 58 and 78.

But there was a further twist as, having appeared to disagree with a warning from referee Luise Kraatz, an exasperated O'Sullivan fouled for the third successive shot by wildly smashing into the pink and sending the cue ball flying from the table to gift his opponent the sixth frame.

The world number one took a scrappy decider to edge through before saying he had been ready to sacrifice his place in the tournament.

"The tip's great, it just keeps falling off," he told BBC Sport. "Every time I played a shot, I just kept thinking 'is it going to fall off?'.

"It was hard because you've got no trust basically. I said to the guy (Muir), 'if it comes off once more, I'll have to just pull out' because I can't keep changing my tip every five or six shots, it's just not fair on the opponent, or even the crowd.

"It stayed on, so we'll have to just wait and see (how it is in the next round). It's never happened to me before.

"The tip was beautiful, it's