Lin Dan
Viktor Axelsen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Lin Dan leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lin Dan at #1 and Viktor Axelsen at #4.
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 Viktor Axelsen
The dominant men's singles player of the 2020s and Europe's finest since the amateur era, Viktor Axelsen became the first non-Asian man in decades to rule the sport outright. The 1.94-metre Dane won Olympic gold in Tokyo 2020 and defended it in Paris 2024, and holds two World titles (2017, 2022) plus All England crowns in 2020 and 2022. Blending a colossal reach, a steep jump smash and hard-won patience, he strung together a spell of near-total dominance around 2021 and 2022, losing only a handful of matches across the seasons. Fluent in Mandarin and famously professional, he relocated to train at altitude in Dubai to extend his career. His rivalries — with Kento Momota, and later a rising field of Asian challengers — have defined the post-Lin Dan landscape and proved that the sport's summit is no longer an Asian monopoly.