page_title: Mark Williams (snooker player)
section_title: 2014/2015
hierarchical_section_title: Mark Williams (snooker player) / Career / 2014/2015
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Bild aufgenommen in Berlin während des German Masters im Snooker 2015. Mark Williams. English: Picture taken in Berlin during the Snooker German Masters in 2015. Mark Williams.
context_page_description: Mark James Williams, MBE is a Welsh professional snooker player who is a three-time World Champion, winning in 2000, 2003, and 2018. Aged 43 when he triumphed in May 2018. Often noted for his single-ball long potting ability, Williams has earned the nickname "The Welsh Potting Machine".
  Williams has been ranked the world number 1 for a total of three seasons in his career. His most successful season to date was 2002/2003, when he won the acclaimed treble of tournaments: the UK Championship, the Masters, and the World Championship. In doing so, he became only the third player, after Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry, to win all three Triple Crown events in one season. In addition, he is the first player to win all three versions of the professional World Championship – the World Snooker Championship, the Six-red World Championship and the World Seniors Championship.
  The first left-handed player to win the World Championship, Williams has won 22 ranking tournaments overall, including two UK Championships, making him fifth on the all-time list. He has also won the Masters on two occasions.
context_section_description: Williams lost in the second round of his first two ranking events of the 2014–15 season. His first quarter-final of the campaign was at the International Championship and he trailed Ronnie O'Sullivan 0–3, before winning five successive frames with a high break of 120. The match went into a deciding frame, which Williams won to beat the five-time world champion for the first time in 12 years. His semi-final match against Mark Allen also went all the way, after Williams had been 4–7 down, and a miss on the final red proved crucial as he was defeated 8–9. He was beaten 2–6 by Stephen Maguire in the third round of the 2014 UK Championship.
  After knocking out Judd Trump 4–1 to reach the quarter-finals of the Welsh Open, Williams said that he no was longer expecting to win tournaments and was more concerned with improving his ranking. He then made two centuries in defeating Marco Fu 5–1 to play in the semi-finals of the event for the first time since 2003. Williams took advantage of Ben Woollaston missing chances to send their match into a deciding frame after he had been 3–5 behind, but lost it to just fall short of reaching the final in his home tournament. Williams won through to the final of the minor-ranking Gdynia Open, but was whitewashed 4–0 by Neil Robertson. Despite only being 39 years old, Williams took part in the World Seniors Championship as he would turn 40 before the end of the season and he won the title by beating Fergal O'Brien 2–1. Another ranking event semi-final followed at the Indian Open, where he lost 2–4 to Michael White.
  After defeating Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the first round of the Players Championship Grand Final, Williams produced back-to-back comebacks from 1–3 down to knock out both Mark Selby and Matthew Selt 4–3. He then reached his first major ranking event final in over three years with a 4–2 win over Judd Trump and raced into a 3–0 lead against Joe Perry. However, his highest break in the next four frames was 14 as Perry fought back to triumph 4–3. In a rematch of the 2000 final, Williams played Matthew Stevens in the first round of the World Championship and was thrashed 10–2.
caption: 2015 German Masters
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