John Higgins (snooker player) title, which prompted Steve Davis to comment "I think John Higgins is the best snooker player I've ever seen in my life". Despite the victory, Higgins lost the world number one ranking to Mark Williams. Higgins had a poor 2011/2012 season, reaching only two quarter finals of major ranking events. His season-best performance was reaching the semi-finals of the Masters, where he lost 4–6 to Shaun Murphy. Before the start of his World Championship title defence, he admitted that his performance levels had not been good enough and that he had not been trying hard enough, managing just one or
2017 China Championship (snooker) 2017 China Championship (snooker) The 2017 Evergrande China Championship was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 16–22 August 2017 in China. It was the second ranking event of the 2017/2018 season. This was the first time the event was a ranking tournament. John Higgins was the defending champion, but was knocked out in the second round by Tom Ford. Luca Brecel won his first ranking tournament, beating Shaun Murphy 10–5 in the final. He became the first player from mainland Europe to win a ranking event. The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below: