The season’s second Super 1000 event is upon us and we examine which player (s) entered to the YONEX All England Open 2023 has won the most titles on English soil in the last five years.

HAPPY HUNTER

Player: Yuta Watanabe

Category: Mixed doubles

World ranking: 2

Seed number: 2

Titles won in England from 2018: 5

Watanabe is a modern-day All England great. So strong is his dominance at the competition that he has titles at four of the last five editions.

The 25-year-old also seems to cherish pursuing records at the world’s oldest badminton tournament.

His maiden crown in 2018 saw Watanabe and Arisa Higashino end Japan’s wait for mixed doubles champions at the then 108-year-old tournament. In 2020, Watanabe and the now-retired Hiroyuki Endo made history by becoming the competition’s first Japanese men’s doubles winners. They won again the following season, when he emulated Korean Kim Dong Moon’s feat from 19 years earlier of triumphing in two categories at the same edition.

A successful title defence this year with Higashino will mean matching Tontowi Ahmad/Liliyana Natsir – the last players to win three consecutive times (2012-2014).

It is therefore no surprise that the second most successful on this list is Higashino with three titles.

OTHER MULTIPLE WINNERS

2

Viktor Axelsen – men’s singles (All England 2020, 2022)

Tai Tzu Ying – women’s singles (All England 2018, 2020)

Tan Pearly/Thinaah Muralitharan – mixed team and women’s doubles (Commonwealth Games 2022)

FUN FACT

Even during a rare blip in 2019, Watanabe left Birmingham with a runner-up finish in mixed doubles.