{"id":11726,"date":"2026-01-12T21:56:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T21:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=11726"},"modified":"2026-01-12T21:56:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T21:56:40","slug":"2026-masters-mark-allen-too-good-for-mark-williams-in-last-16-tie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=11726","title":{"rendered":"2026 Masters: Mark Allen too good for Mark Williams in last-16 tie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Northern Ireland&#8217;s Mark Allen won five frames in a row as he came from behind to defeat Wales&#8217; Mark Williams 6-2 in the first round of the Masters &#8211; despite suffering from illness before the tournament.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a match between two former champions, Allen took the opener thanks to a break of 67, before 50-year-old Williams battled to take the next two to lead 2-1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Allen, 39, made a break of 54 in frame four to ensure it was 2-2 at the mid-session interval and then raised his game with breaks of 60, 125 and 70 to take control of the match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to the BBC after the match, Allen revealed his preparations had been hampered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I felt comfortable, which is weird,&#8221; said Allen. &#8220;I prepare properly for these events but I couldn&#8217;t prepare for this at all as I&#8217;ve been lying in bed all week with food poisoning, so I just thought &#8216;go out there and give my best&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t have had much left if it had got much closer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Masters #Mark #Allen #good #Mark #Williams #last16 #tie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Northern Ireland&#8217;s Mark &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}