British Open snooker 2023: Mark Williams cruises into semi-finals with dominant win over Fan Zhengyi

Mark Williams booked his place in the British Open semi-finals with a commanding 5-1 win over Fan Zhengyi.

Williams began the match in style with a stunning break of 138 to claim the highest break of the tournament to date, which culminated with potting the black to the bottom-right corner before finishing things off with the last red.

The signs were looking ominous when Fan failed to pot the final red and allowed Williams to clean up the table until the black, but still registered a respectable break of 68.

However, the response from Fan was impressive as the Chinese player halved the deficit after capitalising on a Williams misjudgement.

An attempt from baulk went awry and allowed him to brilliantly pot the black to the bottom-left corner, and he excellently landed the last red before clearing the table.

That was ultimately the high point of Fan’s day, though, with Williams relentless from that point onwards. He extended his lead with two breaks of 61 and 43, respectively, and the fact that he failed to pot the final red counted for nothing going into the break.

The Welshman was ready to pounce on any sort of opening left by Fan, and he did just that by pocketing a red to the same corner which the world No. 31 was sizing up, amidst another century break of 109.

What followed was Williams at his eye-catching and sublime best, potting a difficult-looking long red with ease into the bottom-right corner from baulk.

That came before another long red was caught with aplomb down the right rail, and he was able to utilise the blue ball and a series of red-black combinations in scintillating fashion.

Another century failed to materialise on this occasion, as Fan did little on what felt like a brief return on the table, as the 22-year-old conceded the match.

Hossein Vafaei lies in wait for Williams in the semi-finals after the world No. 17 eased past He Guoqiang 5-2.

Vafaei roared back from losing the first two frames by taking the next five, making a splendid 125 clearance to wrap up a comfortable afternoon’s work.