In July 2013 he won the Rotterdam Open, defeating Mark Selby 4–3 in the final. This was Williams' second title in a Players Tour Championship event. However, he had a poor season in the ranking events as he failed to reach a single quarter-final for the first time since the 2006–07 season.&lt;ref name="2013/14"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; He did earn an encouraging 4–3 win over world number one Neil Robertson at the Welsh Open; Williams said afterwards that he was glad he had ignored his friend Stephen Hendry's advice to retire and believed he still had ranking event titles left in him. He had chances to move 3–0 ahead in the last 16 against Marco Fu, but eventually lost 2–4; afterwards he said that the Williams who won two world titles over 10 years ago was "dead". In the qualifying rounds for the World Championship, Williams lost 8–10 to Alan McManus, meaning he was absent from the tournament for the first time since 1996. Williams finished the campaign as the world number 18, the first time he had ended the season outside the top 16 in six years.