He began the season by winning the Shanghai Masters, defeating Liang Wenbo 10–5 in the final. On the way to the final, he lost only 6 frames. He beat Graeme Dott 5–0 in the first round, Marco Fu 5–2 in the second round, Ding Junhui 5–3 in the quarter-finals, and John Higgins 6–1 in the semi–finals. After his Shanghai Masters victory, he joined the newly founded Snooker Players Association. In the second ranking event, the Grand Prix, he beat Jamie Burnett 5–3 in the first round, but then lost narrowly against John Higgins in the second round, by 4–5. On 29 November 2009, O'Sullivan did not retain his Premier League Snooker title, with Shaun Murphy defeating him 7–3 in the final. Following his 9–3 victory over Matthew Stevens in the first round of the UK Championship on 7 December 2009, O'Sullivan caused controversy in his post-match press conference. He described the outgoing regime at the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (headed by Sir Rodney Walker) as "a cancer running through the game", and also said "leukaemia has set in". He went on to endorse the new era of snooker, headed by Barry Hearn. He then won his next two matches, 9–3 against Peter Ebdon in the last 16, and Mark Selby in the quarter-finals, before losing the semi–final 8–9 to John Higgins, despite having come back from 2–8 to 8–8.