London: Denmark badminton ace Viktor Axelsen and Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan have continued their domination and held on to the top spots respectively in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) world men’s singles and women’s singles rankings released on Thursday.
Axelsen topped the standings with 83,754 points to hold an advantage of 3,032 over second placed Chinese player Shi Yuqi, who added to his own total by advancing to the World Championships final before losing to Kento Momota of Japan last Sunday.
The World Champion Kento Momota shot up 3 spots to World No. 4, right behind the Malaysian badminton superstar Lee Chong Wei, while Son Wan-Ho of Korea fell a spot to World No. 5.
In women’s singles, despite her quarter-final loss at last week’s World Championships, Tai Tzu Ying remained atop in the women’s ranking, also opened a wide gap between her and Akane Yamaguchi of Japan. Tai currently has 96,817 points to Yamaguchi’s 87,743 and No. 3 PV Sindhu’s 84,214. And after the top three, there’s a huge drop off in points with No. 4 Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand owning 77,307 points , No. 5 Chen Yufei of China 73,689, and the 2018 World Champion Carolina Marin of Spain with 73,666 points.
Li Junhui/Liu Yuchen were the biggest movers in the men’s doubles top 5 rankings after winning the World Championships last Sunday. They soared up three places into the World No. 2 spot, while Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo of Indonesia still the clear World No. 1 with 102,683 points. World No. 2 Li/Liu were more than 25,698 points behind, followed by Takeshi Kamura/Keigo Sonoda of Japan, Liu Cheng/Zhang Nan of China, and Mathias Boe/Carsten Mogensen of Denmark.
The women’s doubles world rankings saw Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan dropped two positions to No. 3, with Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota and Misaki Matsutomo/Ayaka Takahashi of Japan rounded up the top two rankings.
Winning the 2018 World title did give Zheng Siwei/Huang Yaqiong of China some improvement in the rankings where they and compatriots Wang Yilyu/Huang Dongping each climbed a spot to become the new World No. 1 and No. 2. Malaysia’s Goh Soon Huat/Shevon Jemie Lai also moved up one position to World No. 6.
