Lin Dan
Fu Haifeng
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Lin Dan leads 1 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lin Dan at #1 and Fu Haifeng at #11.
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The case for Lin Dan
Widely regarded as the greatest of all time, Lin Dan is the only man to hold all nine major titles at once, completing the so-called Super Grand Slam by 2011. Super Dan won consecutive Olympic golds in Beijing 2008 and London 2012 — the first man to defend the singles crown — and took five World Championships (2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013) and six All England titles. His left-handed attacking game paired a thunderous jump smash with tactical patience and an unbreakable big-match temperament. The rivalry with Lee Chong Wei, 40 meetings with Lin winning the majority, defined an era; their 2012 Olympic final is routinely called the greatest match ever played. Fierce, charismatic and famously tattooed, he anchored six Thomas Cup-winning Chinese teams before retiring in 2020 after two decades at the very summit of the sport.
The case for Fu Haifeng
The finest men's doubles player of his generation, Fu Haifeng powered China's dominance with the hardest smash the sport had seen — his 332 km/h effort at the 2005 Sudirman Cup stood as a world record and helped define the modern power-doubles era. Partnering Cai Yun, he won Olympic gold at London 2012 and four World Championships (2006, 2009, 2010, 2011), a men's doubles record, then added a second Olympic gold at Rio 2016 alongside Zhang Nan, aged 32. A left-handed rear-court hitter of terrifying force, he anchored multiple Thomas Cup and Sudirman Cup-winning Chinese teams across a 16-year career. Fu proved that doubles could be as thrilling and as decorated as singles, and his blistering attack reshaped how the discipline was played, making the flat, fast, downward game the template for every top pairing that followed.