John Higgins on old nemesis Mark Williams, Crucible shock and commentary nerves

John Higgins is in Manchester to defend his Tour Championship title this week, taking on a player he has been battling it out with for 36 years.

The Wizard of Wishaw brilliantly won the event last year, beating Mark Selby in the final and he is back to face Mark Williams in his opener this time round.

The Scot is not just wielding his cue, but also a microphone as he is on commentary and punditry duty for Channel 5, but defending his title is priority number one.

Just the top 12 on the one-year rankings make it to the Tour Championship, which Higgins says is a key aim at the start of any season.

‘I think if somebody says to you at the start of every season that you’ll be competing in the Tour Championship, it means it’s a good season,’ Higgins told Metro. ‘That’s your aim and I’d have bitten your hand off, really.

‘It would have been pretty poor coming down, commentating on it and speaking about it and you’re not in the event to defend your title.

‘I can’t wait to get out there and obviously playing your old nemesis, Mark Williams. It can’t be any bigger or better than playing Mark.’

Two of the three legendary members of the Class of 92 first met professionally in 1994, but their rivalry goes back even further.

Asked for the first time he met Williams, Higgins said: ‘I’m sure it must have been the Home Internationals at Prestatyn in 1990, I was 15. That was the first time I’d met any players from out of Scotland.’

35 years on from that first meeting, the pair met in the 2025 World Championship quarter-final, which Williams dramatically won 13-12 on the final black.

Higgins feels he ‘owes him one’ for that painful defeat, but it is now a friendly rivalry that has lost the edge it once had.

‘I think it’s a lot better than it was,’ the Scot said of his relationship with the Welshman. ‘It’s only natural as well, I think, when you see the boys nowadays, the likes of Judd [Trump] and Kyren [Wilson], you just get a feeling that they really feel as if they’re rivals and they want to keep their distance from each other. It was probably exactly the same [for us].

‘Back in the day when me, Mark and Ronnie were playing, you were vying against each other for the same titles. As well it’s been well-documented when I’d left the management stable with Ian Doyle and Mark was still under that banner, there was a bit of rivalry there.

‘But nowadays you’re basically smiling walking into these events, knowing that you’re still playing against these guys and still competing. You’ve got to give yourself a pat in the back that you’re still doing it.

‘Listen, we’re dads now, we’re nearly grandads. I think everybody’s got a different outlook on life.’

Higgins felt his meeting with Williams in Sheffield last year was likely their last at the Crucible, but the odds of there being another have been improved this week after the announcement that the World Championship is set to stay at the venue – with a significant revamp – until 2045.

The four-time world champion was thrilled with the news and admits he was stunned by it, feeling a departure from the Crucible was likely when the previous contract was due to end in 2027.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I could not believe it how they got it over the line, especially for the amount of years. Incredible, incredible news.

‘I really thought it was going to be moving, I just didn’t think the Crucible was going to be be big enough for the event. I think it’s great news that it’s going to get upgraded because it certainly needs that.

‘I think obviously you don’t want to lose the uniqueness of the playing arena, which makes the Worlds that special. But behind the scenes it probably hasn’t moved with the times. Now it’s going to get the upgrade and it brings it up to the present day, and it should be a great, great venue going forward.’

Before the Crucible comes Manchester Central and Higgins will be in the commentary box, hoping that the ‘first day of school’ nerves of his Players Championship debut last month will have eased.

‘In the commentary box I really felt the nerves there,’ he said. ‘Dave [Hendon] was great with me, but that was like being back on the first day of school.

‘In the studio it felt okay because obviously you go into the studio after matches anyway and you’ve got somebody like Katie [Shanahan], who I think is really good, so it was all good. I really enjoyed it.

‘I wasn’t really wanting to talk too much on commentary. But then again, when you listen to the other commentators, they maybe speak a little bit more, so then you think to yourself, am I speaking enough? So, I think it’s just trying to get a balance.

‘I don’t go on any social media, so I don’t know how well I would have been received with it, which is maybe a good thing in a way. So I’m only really going by listening to my wife or my brothers. They thought I’d done okay. So I don’t really know what the wider world’s thinking about it.’

The Wizard of Wishaw will be working on his words of wisdom when the Tour Championship kicks off on Monday afternoon, with his latest clash with his old rival coming up on Tuesday.

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