World Snooker Championship 2018: Mark Williams closes in on third world title despite late John Higgins rally

Mark Williams is closing in on a third world title at the Crucible after tightening the screw with a sensational show of potting on Monday afternoon, blowing John Higgins away to hold a 15-10 lead – after the pair had been locked at 7-7 at one stage on Sunday evening. Higgins did recover after the mid-session interval, and came agonisingly close to a 147 break having potted 10 reds and blacks, but he still requires an extraordinary evening session to complete the comeback.

It is 15 years since the 43-year-old Williams last reached the final, a year since he was lost in the qualifiers to the little known Stuart Carrington, and 11 months since he sat down at his kitchen table and told his wife Joanne he wanted to retire. She persuaded him to continue and that decision has been emphatically vindicated.

Here the Welshman showed all the qualities of his rejuvenated game under new coach Stephen Feeney: a peerless long red at the start of frame 20 which clunked the centre of the pocket; five half-centuries in the first four frames which pinned Higgins to his seat; and a safety game so miserly it left the Scot barely half-chances to pick at.

open image in gallery

It is not all Feeney’s work, of course. Williams has a brain hardwired for snooker which intuitively scans the table, computes the angles and determines the outcome, all on his walk from the chair. And when he needs time, he unearths shots his opponent doesn’t see. At one point, leading 11-7, Williams spent nearly two minutes crouching, squinting and covering an eye with his hand as he surgically examined the balls before slicing a plant from the pack that no one else in the arena had spotted.

Having quickly won the first frame of the afternoon, that plant set him on his way to the second, before a rapid 69 break to win the third which had referee Brendan Moore scampering to keep up. Williams made his first mistake of the day in the next frame, missing a tricky red into the corner, but even then Higgins crumbled under the palpable pressure building around him and let Williams back in. Only a flying insect which parked up near the black disturbed a frame-winning visit.

open image in gallery

After the mid-session interval the Wizard of Wishaw showed his impressive powers of recovery, a reminder that he is not down until the 35 frames run out. First he scored a scratchy 67 while always grasping to keep the cue ball under his spell, before a brilliant clearance of 76 snatched frame 24 from under Williams’ nose when the Welshman had led 65-0.

It brought the final to 14-9 and Higgins soon had the Crucible captivated with an attempted maximum. He secured the frame and set about hunting the black, but it became a difficult act to keep up and he eventually missed an acute red into the corner. Williams dug in to capture the final frame of the session and needs only three more to claim his third world title, and complete an extraordinary year.