as Hawkins fought back from a 9–5 deficit to win 13–11. He built an 11–5 lead over Dominic Dale after two sessions of their quarter-final, but upon the resumption of play Dale incredibly won seven frames in a row to stand just one away from equalling the biggest comeback in a quarter-final at the Crucible. However, Hawkins regrouped and made breaks of 66 and 65 to win the last two frames and move into the semi-finals, where he faced Ronnie O'Sullivan in a rematch of the previous year's final. Hawkins trailed 2–6 after the first session and 5–11 after the second session, and lost the match 7–17 with a session to spare. Hawkins was the world number five at the end of the campaign, the highest he has ever finished a season. 2014/2015 Hawkins first ranking event of the 2014–15 season was the 2014 Wuxi Classic and he beat Marco Fu 5–4 to reach the semi-finals, stating later that he was gaining more self belief due to being in the latter stages of big events more regularly. From 3–3, Neil Robertson took a trio of frames to defeat Hawkins 6–3. He was unable to build on his good start to the season however, as he could not advance beyond the last 32 of the next three ranking events and in the second round of the UK Championship he lost 6–5 to Nigel Bond after Hawkins had been 5–0 up. In January 2015, he achieved the second maximum break of his career in his league stage match against Stephen Maguire in group1 of the Championship League. His form in ranking events did not improve though as he was knocked out in the first round of the German Masters and PTC Grand Final and the second round of the Welsh Open. An improvement came at the China Open with wins over Gerard Greene, Dominic Dale and Stephen Maguire. In the quarter-finals he was ousted 5–3 by world number 56 Gary Wilson. Hawkins looked to be cruising into the second round of the World Championship after he took the opening session of his match with Matthew Selt 7–2 and extended it to 9–4. However, Selt won five frames on the trot to take the match into a deciding frame which Hawkins won. Hawkins produced a great comeback in the next round against Mark Allen by winning five frames in a row to triumph