Career

As a junior, he played against Mark Selby frequently. Ford began his professional career by playing Challenge Tour in 2001, at the time the second-level professional tour.His first quarter-final came at the 2005 Malta Cup where he beat Ken Doherty, but eventually lost to Stephen Hendry. In the 2007 Grand Prix, he made a 147 against Steve Davis, after having just come out of hospital suffering from gastroenteritis,but still missed out on the last 16 eventually finishing 3rd in his group. He secured the high break and maximum prize, but it was not televised. In the last 32 of the 2007 Northern Ireland Trophy he held Ronnie O'Sullivan to 4–4, before missing the final blue, allowing O'Sullivan to clinch the frame. Ford made his World Championship debut in 2010, after beating Judd Trump 10–3 in the final qualifying round. He played Mark Allen in the first round, where he lost 10–4.

2014/2015
Ford qualified for the Australian Goldfields Open for the fourth year in a row and lost 5–3 to John Higgins in the first round.He had five defeats in a row after this until beating Barry Pinches 6–4 in the opening round of the UK Championship, his first win in the event after six prior losses.Ford was beaten 6–3 by Joel Walker in the second round. He had a resurgence of form at the Asian Tour event, the Xuzhou Open by knocking out five players to reach the semi-finals, where he lost the last two frames in a 4–3 defeat to Joe Perry.Ford entered the qualifying rounds of the World Championship needing wins to ensure his survival on the tour as he was close to ending the season outside the top 64 in the world rankings. He did so by seeing off Andrew Norman 10–2 and David Gilbert 10–8 to meet Matthew Selt in the final round, where he lost 10–8.Ford ended up 59th in the world rankings, a drop of 27 places during the year.

2015/2016
Ford began the 2015/2016 season by reaching the third final carrying ranking points of his career after overcoming the likes of Joe Perry, Matthew Selt and Ben Woollaston at the Riga Open. Ford won the first frame against Barry Hawkins, but could not capture another to be beaten 4–1.He defeated Scott Donaldson 6–1 and then beat Mark Williams for the first time by recovering from 5–3 down to win 6–5.He followed that up by easing past Kyren Wilson 6–1, but accused his opponent Liang Wenbo of boring him off the table in the fourth round after it was Ford who lost 6–5 having been 5–3 up.Ford failed to build upon this during the rest of the season as he could not get beyond the second round of any ranking event.However, he was able to build on his world ranking to finish as the world number 43, an increase of 16 spots during the year.

2016/2017
A 4–1 victory over Jamie Jones at the Paul Hunter Classic saw Ford reach the second ranking event semi-final of his career and he beat Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 4–2, closing the match with a 136 break.In Ford's first ranking event final he was 2–2 with Mark Selby, before his fellow Leicester player knocked in two 50 plus breaks to defeat Ford 4–2.At the English Open he beat Rory McLeod, Marco Fu and Joe Swail all by 4–2 scorelines, before losing 4–1 to John Higgins. Ford qualified for the German Masters by ousting Judd Trump 5–1 and then made a 147 in a first round 5–2 win over Peter Ebdon.He saw off Mark King 5–2, but then lost 5–2 to Ali Carter in the quarter-finals.Ford qualified for his third World Championship courtesy of victories over Jamie Bodle, Chris Wakelin and Hossein Vafaei.From holding a narrow 2–1 advantage over Barry Hawkins in the first round, Ford was eliminated 10–3.