On 11 December 2011, Trump won his second ranking event tournament, the 2011 UK Championship at the Barbican Centre in York. He defeated Dominic Dale 6–4 in the last 32, before winning the final two frames of the second round to edge out Ronnie O'Sullivan, 6–5. After the match, Trump said that he had been "outplayed" and was "lucky" to have got through. He then dispatched Stephen Maguire 6–3 and faced Neil Robertson in the semi-finals. The semi-final match was a tight and nervy affair, with Trump stating afterwards that he believed Robertson was trying to stifle his natural game by "slowing it down" and "making things awkward", but nevertheless the Bristolian triumphed, 9–7 to reach his first UK final. In the final he played Mark Allen and trailed 1–3 early on in the best-of-19-frames match. However, Trump then produced a match-defining run of seven straight frames to take an 8–3 lead. Despite a strong fightback from Allen, who won five of the next six frames to trail just 8–9, Trump managed to clinch the 18th frame with a break of 91 and won the final 10–8. Six-time winner of the event, Steve Davis, said that Trump's performances during the championship had shown that he was "spearheading his generation" of snooker players. The victory took him up to a career-high world ranking of 5.