Fifth Masters title: Ronnie O'Sullivan.

Fifth Masters title: Ronnie O'Sullivan. Photo: Getty Images

Ronnie O'Sullivan won his fifth snooker Masters title with a 10-4 win over defending champion Mark Selby in the final at London's Alexandra Palace on Sunday.

World champion O'Sullivan all but put the result against his fellow Englishman beyond doubt by storming into a 7-1 lead at the end of the first session in the best-of-19 frames contest.

"The Rocket", cheered on by some raucous fans in what is effectively a "home" tournament given he hails from Chigwell, just east of London, then won the opening frame of the evening session.

Selby, from Leicester in the English Midlands, claimed three frames in all during that second session to give the scoreline a touch more respectability.

But there was a sense he was delaying the inevitable and the 38-year-old O'Sullivan duly won his first Masters title since defeating Selby in the 2009 final.

O'Sullivan, in a record 10th Masters final, raced into a 5-0 lead against Selby, himself a three-time Masters champion.

O'Sullivan rattled off the first three frames with breaks of 97, 70 and 96 before taking a scrappy fourth, the last before the mid-session interval.

The break did little to interrupt O'Sullivan's flow as he took the fifth frame before Selby spared himself the embarrassment of a whitewash by winning the sixth.

However, O'Sullivan took the seventh on a re-spotted black, having been 35 points behind with 35 left on the table before pouncing on a poor safety by Selby, and then won the final frame of the session.