Akane Yamaguchi

Akane Yamaguchi is a three-time world champion who has spent 2026 as the second-best player in the world, and the gap to An defines her season. She is No. 2 on the BWF list of 27 October with 103,726 points, 18,561 behind An Se-young, and she has lost to An in five finals this year: Singapore, Indonesia, the World Championships, the Asian Games and the Denmark Open.

Who she is

Yamaguchi was born on 6 June 1997 in Katsuyama, Fukui, and at 1.56 m she is short for a top-level singles player. She first reached No. 1 in April 2018, won the World Championships in 2021 and 2022, and then again in Paris in 2025 after two leaner seasons. Her other major titles are the 2022 All England, the 2022 World Tour Finals in Bangkok and the 2017 Superseries Finals in Dubai, plus five Super 1000s between 2019 and 2026, the latest at the 2026 China Open.

She has reached three Olympic quarter-finals (Rio, Tokyo, Paris) without a medal, which is the one gap in the record.

How she plays

Height tells you what she cannot do: she will never win a match on steepness from the rear court. What she does instead is retrieve, and she is arguably the best in the women’s game at it. She is fast, she makes very few mistakes, and she waits for you to hurry.

Watch three things. Her footwork to the four corners is short-stepped and early, so she takes the shuttle higher than her height suggests. Her defence against the smash is a flat push to the midcourt rather than a lift, which denies the attacker a second smash and starts a drive exchange she usually wins. And when she does attack, the smash is placed rather than hit: body or sideline, rarely the middle.

The pattern that beats her is the one An Se-young uses: match her retrieving, out-last her in the long rallies, and keep the lifts deep so she cannot step in and take the net.

2026 so far

Three titles and six lost finals, two of them for silver at the World Championships and the Asian Games.

Tournament	Dates	Result
Malaysia Open (Super 1000)	6 to 11 Jan	Quarter-final, retired against P. V. Sindhu
All England Open (Super 1000)	3 to 8 Mar	Semi-final, lost to Wang Zhiyi
Asian Championships, Ningbo	April	Bronze, lost semi-final to Wang Zhiyi 21-14, 9-21, 13-21
Thailand Open (Super 500)	12 to 17 May	Won, bt Chen Yufei 21-14, 21-18
Singapore Open (Super 750)	26 to 31 May	Final, lost to An Se-young 11-21, 21-17, 19-21
Indonesia Open (Super 1000)	2 to 7 Jun	Final, lost to An Se-young 21-23, 12-21
Australian Open (Super 500)	9 to 14 Jun	Won, bt Pornpawee Chochuwong 22-20, 21-18
Japan Open (Super 750)	14 to 19 Jul	Final, lost to P. V. Sindhu 17-21, 17-21
China Open (Super 1000)	21 to 26 Jul	Won, bt Chen Yufei 21-18, 21-16
World Championships, New Delhi	17 to 23 Aug	Silver, lost to An Se-young 17-21, 14-21
Asian Games, Aichi-Nagoya	September	Silver in singles (lost to An 17-21, 9-21); silver with Japan’s team
Denmark Open (Super 750)	13 to 18 Oct	Final, lost to An Se-young 23-21, 14-21, 18-21

The Denmark Open final is the closest she has come: a game up before An pulled away over the last two.

Titles

World Championships gold (2021, 2022, 2025), silver (2026), bronze (2018, 2023). All England (2022). BWF World Tour Finals (2022) and Superseries Finals (2017). Asian Championships (2019). Super 1000 titles: Indonesia Open (2019), Denmark Open (2021), All England (2022), Malaysia Open (2023), China Open (2026). Asian Games: singles silver (2026) and bronze (2018), team gold (2018).

What to watch for

Whether she can beat An before the season ends. The two are likely to meet again at the World Tour Finals in Hangzhou in December, and the Denmark Open final showed the match is closer than the head-to-head suggests.

Steal her defence: push the smash flat to the midcourt instead of lifting it, and the attacker’s best shot becomes a neutral rally.