HITTING THE MARK

Mark Williams reached the UK Championship final a few weeks ago without really hitting the heights until the end of his semi-final against Shaun Murphy but was superb last night in beating Dominic Dale 5-2.

A huge crowd witnessed the twice world champion run through the first two frames in 20 minutes, notch up his 250th career century and eventually ease to the line.

Williams's great run towards becoming world champion in some ways began in Germany. He was runner-up to John Parrott in the 1998 German Masters in Bingen, won the Irish Open the next week, then the Welsh and Thailand titles, was runner-up at the Crucible and the following year lifted the biggest snooker crown of them all.

His game is back, his confidence is back and that makes him very difficult to beat.

Two Joes have returned to form after failing to do much of late.

Joe Swail often does this: tumbles down the rankings and then pulls out a great performance to arrest his slide.

He only won one match in a ranking event last season and was heading into the 50s on the list when the 2009 Welsh Open points were taken off - the Northern Irishman was runner-up in that tournament.

From somewhere, he has found the game to beat Mark Allen and Shaun Murphy on successive days.

His quarter-final opponent Marco Fu built on the confidence gained from his run to the Masters final to beat Mark King before his walkover against John Higgins.

Joe Perry had fallen to 32nd in the rankings but a 5-1 defeat of Ali Carter is a real confidence booster. Williams, though, presents an altogether tougher challenge.

The main televised quarter-final is Ding Junhui v Mark Selby.

For all Selby's obvious qualities he has still only won one ranking title and that was three years ago, although his two Masters victories mean that this doesn't tell the full story of his recent career.

Still, it's a statistic he will want to change and beating in-form players like Ding is the key to converting consistency into silverware.