Researching Mark Williams

Williams has been ranked the world number one player for a total of three seasons in his career (1999–00, 2000–01, and 2002–03). His most successful season to date was 2002–03, when he won the acclaimed treble of tournaments (known as the Triple Crown): the UK Championship, the Masters, and the World Championship. In doing so, he became only the third player, after Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry, to win all three Triple Crown events in one season. In addition, he is the first player (and to date, the only player) to win all three versions of the professional World Championship – the World Snooker Championship, the Six-red World Championship and the World Seniors Championship.

The first left-handed player to win the World Championship, Williams has won 24 ranking tournaments overall, including two UK Championships (1999 and 2002), making him fifth on the all-time list. He has also won the Masters on two occasions (1998 and 2003). His form began to decline after his second World Championship title in 2003; he then dropped out of the top 16 following the 2007–08 season, but he regained his place for 2009–10. Williams has compiled over 500 century breaks during his career, as well as two maximum breaks in competition.

Williams is a graduate of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of Plymouth, and was Deputy Headteacher of a school in Llangorse near Brecon before becoming an MP.

He has also been involved with a number of charities. He has been a trustee of the Friends of Cathedral Music, and serves on the boards of Cambridge Early Music, the Oundle Music Trust, and the Harlton Organ Trust, and is a founding trustee of The Muze Trust, which supports music making in Zambia, and Songbound, a charity which sets up and supports choirs for under-privileged children in India. In 2013 he organised a tour of India by the choir of Jesus College, Cambridge, which included a week working with Songbound in the slums of Mumbai.

In 1996, towards the end of his playing career, Williams was selected as head coach of the United States national rugby sevens team. He coached the U.S. sevens team to a 17th place finish at the 1997 Rugby World Cup Sevens.

Williams was born in Sydney but moved to the United States when he was nine years old. In 1999, while he was at UCLA, Williams trained with the Australian national indoor team. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, was a libero of the squad which placed eighth among 12 participating teams.

In 1998 he made his debut in beach volleyball with Larry Witt where they competed in Hermosa Beach. After graduating in 2001, he played in five AVP events that year with several partners.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Williams qualified for the beach volleyball tournament alongside Julien Prosser after competing in the FIVB Tour during the 2003 season. They finished in fourth place after losing the bronze medal match to fifth-seeded team Patrick Heuscher and Stefan Kobel from Switzerland.