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Mark King

King struggled for form in the first half of the 2008/09 season, winning just two matches in the first five ranking events.
Crucially, he won his opening match in both the Welsh Open and Bank of Beijing China Open to give himself a fighting chance of retaining his top 16 status for another season as he headed to the Betfred.com World Snooker Championship.
Handed a tricky opening tie against debutant Rory McLeod, King came from 4-3 down to win 10-6, despite being made to endure a few hours of agony after the slow-moving contest was pulled off at 9-5, resuming later on the same day.
“I feel brilliant,” said the Essex potter. “In all the years I’ve been playing here that was the best I’ve felt. Ninety per cent of this game is between the ears, it doesn’t matter what technique you’ve got. You get a momentum and it’s the same when you lose. It’s very easy to think you’re not going to win your next game, that’s the difficult bit. You forget about all the games you’ve won. It’s brain damage. Ali Carter is a fine example, he got to the final last year and he’s got his Superman badge on, it’s all about winning.”
King was unable to prove himself a man of steel, losing 13-6 to Stephen Maguire in a match which featured the longest frame in Crucible history, clocking exactly 75 minutes. It was his sixth appearance in the last 16 at Sheffield and he is yet to reach the quarter-finals. “I was absolute rubbish,” admitted the left-hander, who finished the season at No 16 in the rankings. “If I could have steppped up to the plate and put a few frames together, we could have had a real game. But I never put him under any pressure, I made it easy for him in the end. After the way I’ve played this season, it’s a bonus to be in the top 16. I’ll take a few weeks off then I have to start hitting some balls quickly.”
In 2006, King reached the semi-finals of the Royal London Watches Grand Prix – progressing from the round robin phase in Aberdeen in bizarre circumstances. He had already booked his flight home as he had assumed that he could not qualify from his group – but did just that thanks to Ali Carter’s 3-2 win over Shaun Murphy.
King went on to beat Stephen Lee and John Higgins but was denied the third ranking final of his career by Jamie Cope.
His first ranking final was the 1997 Welsh Open when he accounted for the likes of Steve Davis and Mark Williams but lost 9-2 to Stephen Hendry.
The second was the 2004 Irish Masters when embarked upon a giant-killing run with wins over Hendry, Jimmy White, Graeme Dott and local favourite Ken Doherty. But Peter Ebdon denied him the silverware with a 10-7 success.
That came just a few months after King had announced his retirement from snooker – a decision he later reversed. "At the time I wanted to snap my cue," he said. "I took a couple of weeks off then had a long chat with my wife and we agreed that I should stick with snooker."
The West Ham fan enjoys spending time with his wife and two young children Mazie and Freddie. He loves tattoos and has at least ten on his arms and back.
King’s flirtation with boxing came to an abrupt end when he lost a three-round contest against Quinten Hann in the infamous Pot Whack in London in 2004

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