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
2012 Masters (snooker) 10–6 in the final. This was Robertson's 10th professional title and his second Triple Crown title after winning the 2010 World Snooker Championship. Defending champion Ding Junhui was the number 1 seed with World Champion John Higgins seeded 2. The remaining places were allocated to players based on the latest world rankings (revision 2). Martin Gould was making his debut in the Masters. The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below: Total: 21 2012 Masters (snooker) The 2012 BGC Masters was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament held between 15–22 January 2012 at the Alexandra Palace in London,