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
John Higgins (snooker player) matches for money. Although an investigation cleared Higgins of match-fixing allegations, it found that he had brought the sport into disrepute by failing to report, and giving the impression of agreeing with, an invitation to breach the sport's betting rules. The WPBSA banned Higgins from professional competition for six months and fined him £75,000. He returned to the tour midway through the 2010/2011 season. After his return to snooker, Higgins added a third UK Championship title and claimed his fourth world title in 2011. He subsequently experienced a noted slump in form, and between 2012 and 2014 only won the