match against Martin Gould, Robertson trailed 0–6 and 5–11 before recovering to win the match 13–12. He defeated Steve Davis 13–5 in the quarter-finals. He faced Ali Carter in the semi-finals, winning 17–12 to reach the final. There he defeated 2006 champion Graeme Dott 18–13 to become only the third player from outside the UK, only the second from outside the UK and Ireland, and the first Australian to become world champion in the modern era of the game. (Although the record books show Australian Horace Lindrum triumphed in 1952, that was the year when the sport's leading players staged a boycott so Lindrum has not been widely regarded as a credible world champion.) The win took Robertson to a career-high ranking of world number two in the following season. 2010–11 season At the start of the new season Robertson lost in the first round of the 2010 Shanghai Masters to Peter Ebdon. However, at the World Open, where he was drawn in the last 64 against Graeme Dott in a repeat of their world final, Robertson won 3–1, then went on to beat David Morris, Andrew Higginson, Ricky Walden and Mark Williams before producing an assured display to beat Ronnie O'Sullivan 5–1 in the final, to confirm his position as the eighth world number one in snooker. He was invited to the Premier League Snooker, where he reached the semi-final, but lost 1–5 against O'Sullivan. Robertson reached the quarter-finals of the UK Championship, where he lost 7–9 to Shaun Murphy, then also reached the quarter-finals of the Masters, but lost again, by 4–6 to Mark Allen. He was defeated in the first round of the German Masters too. At the next two ranking tournaments he lost in the second round, 1–4 against Graeme Dott at the Welsh Open and 1–5 against Peter Ebdon at the China Open, and he could not defend his World Snooker Championship title either, as he lost 8–10 in the first round against eventual finalist Judd Trump. 2011–12 season Robertson's season started in a disappointing fashion as he lost 4–5 to Dominic Dale in the last 16 of his home tournament, the Australian Goldfields Open. However, his form soon improved and at the next world ranking event, the Shanghai Masters, he dismissed Liang Wenbo, Michael Holt and John Higgins, before losing 5–6 to Mark Williams in a tightly contested semi-final. His first silverware of the