McGill could only qualify for the China Open during the &lt;a href="2012%E2%80%9313%20snooker%20season"&gt;2012/2013 season&lt;/a&gt;. He beat David Grace, Yu Delu and Martin Gould to reach the venue in Beijing, where he defeated Heydari Nezhad Ehsan 5–3 in the wild-card round.&lt;ref name="2012/13"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; He faced Mark Allen in the last 32 and lost 1–5. McGill had a very good season in the Players Tour Championship events by reaching his first ever ranking final in the European Tour Event 5, played in his homeland of Scotland. He saw off the likes of Mark Davis and Robert Milkins to make it through to the quarter-finals where he was 0–3 and 51 points down against Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon to triumph 4–3. He was also 1–3 down in the semis to Andrew Higginson, but recovered to win on a respotted black. McGill played Ding Junhui in the final and came up short of winning the title as he lost 2–4. The run helped him to 16th on the PTC Order of Merit to qualify for the Finals, where he beat Milkins 4–2 before once again losing to Ding, this time by a 3–4 scoreline. In the third round of World Championship Qualifying McGill fought back from 3–8 down against Rod Lawler to force a decider which Lawler won. McGill ended the season at number 48 in the rankings, at that point his highest position.