Evergreen Mark Williams reaches English Open final after huge comeback victory

The best of 17 frames title decider will be played across two sessions at the Brentwood Centre (13:00BST & 19:00BST) with the winner collecting the fifth ranking crown of the season, pocketing a £100,000 first prize, and adding their name for the first time on The Steve Davis Trophy.

Williams and Carter navigated their semi-final assignments on Saturday in contrasting fashions.

In the evening session, Welshman Williams conjured up one of the biggest comebacks of his illustrious career as he strung together the final five frames from 5-1 down to deny Shaun Murphy, 6-5, and reach his 45th ranking event final.

World number seven Murphy took the opening frame before pinching the second on the final black with a counter clearance of 50. A 61 helped him make it 3-0 before he completed a mini-session whitewash with a run of 128.

On resumption, Williams got on the scoreboard with frame five, but Murphy claimed the next for 5-1, meaning he required just one more frame for a final date.

Three-time World Champion Williams began his huge recovery with an 82 in frame seven, before crafting a counter clearance of 69 to steal the eighth on the final black when his opponent had one foot and several toes in the final before unexpectedly missing a black off its spot.

5-3 then became 5-4, but Murphy again moved to within a few pots of the finish line as he made a 51 in frame ten before being unable to take the effort further. However, Williams once more mustered up a rallying contribution from behind, constructing a 65 clearance to oust the frame on the final ball and restore parity at 5-5 - the first time the players had been level since the opening frame.

And in the decider, Williams made a cool 69 on his way to winning his fifth frame in-a-row and completing the very unlikely turnaround.

Sixth on snooker’s all-time list for most ranking event title triumphs, Williams’ last crown came last October when he defeated Murphy in the final to win the 2025 Xi’an Grand Prix. Aged 50 years and 206 days at the time, Williams eclipsed fellow Welshman Ray Reardon’s long-standing record to become the oldest-ever winner of a ranking title. On Sunday, he has the opportunity to better that benchmark by 11 months.

‘The Welsh Potting Machine’ is the oldest ranking event finalist in nearly 40 years, with a 53-year-old Rex Williams having made the final of the Grand Prix in October 1986 where he was denied 10-6 by Jimmy White.

Carter makes final of home county professional tournament

Williams will face Carter on Sunday after ‘The Captain’ - who doesn’t live far from the Brentwood venue - produced a sizzling second-half burst to defeat Ding Junhui, 6-2, in the afternoon session.

His first last four appearance in over 17 months on the World Snooker Tour, breaks of 98 and 65 assisted Ding to 1-0 and 2-1 leads early on.

However, 47-year-old Carter made a 90 in frame two, and secured frame four to square up at 2-2 going into the interval.

When the players returned, six-time ranking event winner Carter pieced together a brilliant four-frame streak, not allowing his opponent to score a single point as runs of 74, 119, 76, and 77 put him into his 14th ranking final. In total, Carter amassed over 400 unanswered points as he reeled off the last five frames.

Already up eight places in the provisional rankings with this final run, should Carter get the better of Williams and secure the first Home Nations Series event of the season, he would return to the world’s elite top 16.

For the second successive final on the professional circuit it’s an England v Wales affair after Jak Jones defeated Mark Selby in last Sunday’s 2026 British Open title decider.

There wasn’t much to suggest that either Williams or Carter would make the final this week after fairly uneventful starts to their respective seasons, and neither have been prolific across the previous ten years of the Home Nations Series, with the only final appearance between them being Williams’ title glory at the 2017 Northern Ireland Open.

In terms of their career head-to-head record, the score is very close (20-19 - and one draw - to Williams if you include all professional formats), although Carter has won their last three meetings. The last of those was a 6-5 victory in the last 16 of last year’s Shanghai Masters. Sunday will be their biggest encounter with what’s on offer.

To view the full draw, results, schedule, and other information from the 2026 English Open snooker, visit our tournament information centre here.