his heavy defeat to O'Sullivan at the Masters in January to beating him was playing the balls instead of his opponent and that he was proud of having handled the most pressure he ever felt during his career. The match seemed to take a lot out of Hawkins as he was 9–1 behind Marco Fu in the quarters, but he rediscovered his form to be just 10–9 and 12–11 down. In the next frame Hawkins was 60–0 ahead, before Fu made a 74 break to close out the match. Afterwards Hawkins said he had not slept at all after his win over O'Sullivan and was unable to focus during the first session of the Fu match. 2016/2017 After not getting past the third round in the early part of the 2016–17 season, Hawkins reached the semi-finals of the English Open, where he lost 6–2 to Judd Trump. The next Home Nations event was the Northern Ireland Open and Hawkins again won through to the semi-finals. Anthony Hamilton came back from 4–2 and 5–3 down to send the match in to a deciding frame in which he feathered the white when well placed to hand Hawkins a chance for the match which he took. Hawkins was 5–1 ahead of Mark King in the final, before King won five frames in a row. Hawkins won a re-spotted black to make it 8–8 and then lost the deciding frame. In the second round of the UK Championship, Fergal O'Brien became the first player to make five centuries in a best-of-11 frame match as he edged out Hawkins 6–5. Hawkins had a good run at the Masters, needing only one frame to reach the final for a second consecutive time. He had a 5–2 advantage in his semi-final match against Joe Perry, before Perry secured the snooker he needed to reduce the lead to 5–3. Perry went on to win the three remaining frames, clinching the match and narrowly denying Hawkins a rematch against defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan. Hawkins beat Kyren Wilson 4–2, Judd Trump 4–1, Neil Robertson 4–2 and Liang Wenbo 6–1 to reach the final of the World Grand Prix. He made five century breaks to be 9–3 up on Ryan Day who then closed the gap to 9–7, before Hawkins took the next frame to win his third ranking title. He lost 5–4 on the final black to Trump in the