Williams overcame Hendry 10-4 (Getty Images).

WILLIAMS CLAIMS FINAL MASTERS TITLE

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Mark Williams brought the curtain down on 29 years of Benson and Hedges Masters history on Sunday by denying Stephen Hendry a seventh Wembley title.

Williams, who claimed his main motivation was picking up big cheques, collected a £210,000 prize along with the gold trophy for his crushing 10-4 success.

It was the biggest winning margin since Ronnie O'Sullivan defeated Hendry's fellow Scot John Higgins 9-3 in 1995.

Williams has now won the UK and Masters crowns in the last two months.

And he now needs the World Championship at Sheffield in May to complete snooker's triple crown.

Williams beat Hendry 10-9 on a re-spotted black in the 1998 Masters final.

And another close match looked likely between two players on top of their game.

However, Hendry, so impressive when he defeated his Welsh stablemate in last month's Welsh Open final, never got going.

He won two of his four frames with century breaks but lost most of the tactical and scrappy frames.

Hendry, who won the first of his six Masters crown in 1989, collected a cheque for £100,000 plus an extra £22,000 for his 144 tournament high break against Ken Doherty in the semi-finals.

Williams has now collected £337,000 in the last couple of months and his win was richly deserved.

Hendry was never in front and lost his chance of victory in the opening session.

After squaring the match at 1-1, Hendry lost five frames on the spin, making some uncharacteristic errors as the game progressed.

He managed to hit form with a 102 in the final frame of the afternoon session and needed to maintain that level when the contest resumed to trouble the provisional world number one.

And despite losing the opening frame of the night - the session delayed for 35 minutes for the benefit of BBC Television - Hendry cut his arrears to 7-4 with runs of 101 and 44.

A crowd of 2,500, swelling the eight-day total attendance to a bumper 23,000, hoped for a comeback.

The last two finals had both gone to the wire and the spectators might have seen another cliffhanger had Hendry managed to take the 12th frame.

He had sufficient opportunity but it was Williams who potted the vital balls.

And the 27-year-old left hander allowed Hendry just one point in the last two frames to claim his 14th major title.

"There has been a lot of talk about the winner being able to keep the trophy as it is the last year, so I'll have to have a word," said Williams.

"Mark dominated the final," said Hendry. "But he got all the run of the balls as usual," added the Scot, managing a smile.

"I would love to keep the trophy but I'm not sure whether they will let me," said Williams. "I just hope they will let me take it home for a few months to show my family.

"The money is fantastic, it's just a shame I have got to give some of it to my manager, Ian Doyle.

"It means a lot to me to have been in the last three finals and to have won two of them.

"But it wasn't the greatest final. At least I managed to get a better start than I did against him at Cardiff and that settled me down.

"I nicked a frame to go 8-4 up and then played my best snooker of the match in the last two frames."

Hendry had no complaints at missing out on a seventh Masters title. He said: "Mark dominated the match, though it wasn't a fantastic standard. In fact, it was pretty poor."

Hendry pinpointed the fifth frame as where the match began to slip away from him.

He said: "I missed a black at 3-1 which I just totally took for granted. I had done all the hard work and got in perfect position then missed the black.

"But it's a long time since I allowed one miss to affect me that badly.

"I was gone for the rest of the session. I did manage to make it 6-2 and I suppose anything could have happened in the second session.

"However, I couldn't get two positional shots in a row and I wasn't able to put Mark under any pressure."