Snooker: Catch Mark Williams If You Can

For Mark Williams, tournament wins this season are like buses.

You wait ages for one, and then a load come along at once.

He waited seven years for his 19th ranking title in Belfast since 2011.

And, now, some three months later, the Welsh Potting Machine at 42, has magicked his 20th ranking title at the D88 German Masters in Berlin where he slaughtered Graeme Dott 9 - 1 in the final.

A Breeze

It was a breeze of a two sessions for the Welshman as he raced into a 3 - 1 lead before the mid-session interval, and, after, he then nicked two key frames off Dott to finish the session a remarkable 7 - 1 up.

It was much of the same as Williams then pounced on some more Dott bad luck and poor safety and clinched the final two frames he needed to win the German Masters for the second time and the first to win the event twice.

Williams pocketed £80,000 for the first prize and shoots up to seventh in the World rankings.

He has already qualified for the Champion of Champions later this year and has also potentially secured himself in a strong position to qualify automatically for the Crucible in Sheffield in April for the World Championships.

This season, the three Class of 92 players have won a whopping six ranking titles between them.

Ronnie O'Sullivan has won three, Williams two, and John Higgins one.

The Welshman's prize money total this season is well over £360, 000 with consistent quarter final and semi-final places thrown in.

Coach Williams

Williams paid tribute to the team behind his rejuvenation as a born again snooker player to his coaches Lee Walker and the SightRight man of the moment Steve Feeney who has been leading players on the holy grail of snooker where the likes of Martin Gould, Stuart Bingham, Shaun Murphy and Mark Williams have all won tournaments and raised their games with the revolutionary training and coaching techniques.

As well as winning, Williams announced on Eurosport during the German Masters that he would be taking a SightRight coaching course to become a coach himself in the next month or two.

When asked what he thought his chances were of winning the World Championships this year, Williams joked after in the Eurosport studio: "We've all got to beat the man sitting next to us," Namely Ronnie O'Sullivan.

On BetFred, current sponsors of the World Snooker Championship, oddschecker.com tip Williams as a 20/1 shot.

His highest odds are 30/1 on some betting sites.

Judd Trump, who was knocked out in the semi-finals to Mark Williams, earlier on in the week had said that some of the younger players were having one last surge of form before they bowed out of the game.

On William's form, that might be a while yet!

Graeme Dott was in his first ranking final since 2007 where he won a second ranking title the China Open.

His first was the World title in 2006!

He said after he was disappointed he couldn't give the German audience a proper contest but he had been "slaughtered."

Ronnie O'Sullivan earlier on in the tournament as a pundit said one of the reasons why there is a group of older players still competing well into their forties and winning, was because of the strength in the amateur game they played when they were juniors.

So far this season there has been three players in their forties, a player in his late thirties, namely Ryan Day at 37 winning his first major title in Riga.

The trend doesn't seem to be changing quickly.

Only China's Yan Bingtao has been the youngest in a final when he was beaten in Belfast to Mark Williams at 17.

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