Tony Jones won the English Amateur Championship in 1983, beating a certain John Parrott in the final and turned professional later that year. In his first few seasons on the tour he regularly reached the last 32 in the big events without going any further and it was not until his seventh season that he first made it to a quarter final in a ranking event, the 1989 Asian Open. In the meantime he did have some success in 1984 when, in partnership with Ray Reardon, he got to the final of the Hofmeister World Doubles.

He had still not made it into the top 32 in the rankings when he reached his second ranking quarter final in the 1991 British Open. Then, a few weeks later, he reached the final of the European Open in Rotterdam and defeated Mark Johnston-Allen 9-7 to claim his only major title. This catapulted him into the top 16 at number 15.

His stay at the top level was destines to be a short one and with nothing better than a top 16 finish in 1991/2 he was back down to 22^nd and continued to fall for the next few seasons. He did reach the quarter final of the 1993 International Open and the 1996 Grand Prix but by the end of the 1995/6 season he was down to 63^rd and, apart from a couple of seasons where he steadied the slide, he continued downhill with very few match wins until he dropped off the tour at the end of the 2003/4 season. He played on for one more season on the Challenge tour and then retired from the professional game.

Tony is one of those players who never achieved his potential and in fact, had it not been for that one ranking title, he would have gone largely un-noticed.