Early in the season Ford won his first professional title, Event 3 of the Players Tour Championship, beating Jack Lisowski 4–0 in the final while working with sports mentor Matt Andrews.

[2] Ford failed to qualify for the main draws of both the Shanghai Masters and the World Open, but did beat Tony Drago and Gerard Greene to reach the Last 32 of the UK Championship.

[4] The first world ranking event of the season was the inaugural Australian Goldfields Open, where Ford reached the final stages by beating Gerard Greene.

[5] He made it through to his third successive UK Championship main draw where he played former world champion Neil Robertson, but was comfortably beaten 1–6.

[9] He then qualified for the wildcard round of the German Masters with a 5–0 whitewash of Anthony Hamilton and beat Irishman Philip Arnold 5–1 to reach the last 32, where he met Mark Allen.

Ford also reached the second round of the World Open, thanks to the withdrawal of Ronnie O'Sullivan, but exited the tournament in a final frame decider versus Mark King.

[17] At the 2013 Australian Goldfields Open Ford reached the quarter-finals of a ranking event for the third time in his career by beating Ryan Day and Barry Hawkins, before losing 3–5 to Robert Milkins.

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 3–4 defeat to Joe Perry.

[24] Ford began the 2015–16 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.

[26] 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 5–6 having been 5–3 up.

[30] 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.

[32] At the English Open he beat Rory McLeod, Marco Fu and Joe Swail all by 4–2 scorelines, before losing 1–4 to John Higgins.