Lin Dan
Kento Momota
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Lin Dan leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lin Dan at #1 and Kento Momota at #10.
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 Kento Momota
At his 2018 to 2019 peak, Kento Momota was untouchable. He won back-to-back World Championships (2018, 2019) and captured a record 11 titles in the 2019 calendar season, the most in the sport's history, finishing the year as an utterly dominant world No. 1. A left-hander who relied on pinpoint control, elite defence and tactical intelligence rather than raw power, he had already rebuilt his career after a 2016 gambling scandal cost him a place at the Rio Olympics. Then, in January 2020, a car crash in Malaysia that killed the driver left Momota with a fractured eye socket; he was never quite the same, exiting Tokyo 2020 in the group stage. He retired in 2024. For roughly two seasons, however, few players in history have been more complete, and that fleeting peak was as high as anyone has reached.