Mark Williams ended an eight-year wait for victory over Ronnie O’Sullivan by storming back from a three-frame deficit to win 6-5 and reach the semi-finals of the Masters.
Williams’s hopes of beating the seven-time Masters champion seemed distant as O’Sullivan surged into a 3-0 lead at Alexandra Palace.
However, the Welshman – who clawed his way back into the contest with a tournament-best break of 143 – won three successive frames to lead 5-4 and then held his nerve with another century in the decider to seal a semi-final spot against Hossein Vafaei or Jack Lisowski. “The first three frames I didn’t have a shot,” Williams told the BBC after ending a run of six successive defeats to O’Sullivan, a run stretching back to the 2014 International Championship in China. “He tied me up in knots, he was making breaks galore.
But I felt the crowd started to sway towards me at the end and most of them wanted me to win, which was unbelievable.” Asked if it was his most satisfying win in recent seasons, the 47-year-old three-time world champion said: “Yeah, you’re playing the greatest player ever … and I don’t think I’ve beaten him in the UK for 20 years.