When it comes to Welshmen and snooker, you can be forgiven for focusing entirely on Ryan Day this week following his maiden ranking event triumph at the Riga Masters.
But his compatriot Mark Williams has plenty to feel confident about too. He navigated his way through to the last four in Latvia in what was a timely run given he came precariously close to retiring from the game over the summer.
The two-time world champion had a mixed end to last season. He reached the final of the China Open in the penultimate event of the season, but his defeat to Mark Selby meant he was unable to cling on to his place in the top 16 and was forced to go to the qualifiers for the World Championship.
His defeat to Grimsby’s Stuart Carrington in the final round meant he failed to qualify for the sport’s showpiece event at The Crucible for the first time since his debut there back in 1997.
Snooker fans across the UK united in the view that the tournament was a poorer one for his absence and although Williams remained philosophical about it, he later revealed he came close to packing in the game.
“For the first time ever I really thought hard about retiring,” Williams told World Snooker. “I spoke to my wife about it and realised that if I did retire I’ve no idea what I would do.
“For the last few years I have been playing awful, and the older you get the harder snooker gets. I know I reached the China Open final last year, but I’ve only played two good matches in the last three or four years. I got bored of it, I wasn’t enjoying practice and I knew I couldn’t go on the same way.”
Fresh start
The only thing that convinced Williams to give the game another shot this season was encouragement from his coach Lee Walker who set him up with Steven Feeney’s coaching method SightRight, which uses sighting and alignment techniques with the intention to improve accuracy.
Williams said: “If I’m going to carry on playing then I need to try something completely different. So I decided to give it (SightRight) a go and I’m going to trust in it and practise hard this season. I have seen Stephen a few times and I’m listening to what he’s saying. The things we have talked about and put in place have made a lot of sense."
Mark’s legion of fans are desperate to see him succeed because, despite his obvious frustrations, Williams still brings great pleasure to those who watch him play.
His path to the final and semi-finals in two of the last three events suggest he still has what it takes to get results and stay among the game’s elite, but is that enough?
Williams is truly one of the sport’s all-time greats. His level of performance is of course not to the level which saw him reach the very top of the sport back in the early 2000s. This brutal truth must surely hurt a player who has been used to so much success.
All Mark’s fans can hope is that with his new approach to the campaign, he can rekindle both his hunger and enjoyment to play so that the good times, albeit less frequent, do not come to a complete end.
