All England Open champions: An assembly line of badminton’s biggest names

Started in 1899, the All England Open Badminton Championships, popularly called the All England Open, is the oldest and most prestigious annual badminton tournament in the world.

Even after badminton’s inclusion in the Olympics programme and the emergence of BWF majors like the world championships and World Tour finals, the British heritage tournament hasn’t lost any of its sheen.

Over the years, the All England Open winners list has been graced by the who’s who of world badminton - from the legendary Sir George Thomas and Betty Uber, after whom the Thomas and Uber Cups have been named, in the amateur era to Open era icons like Lin Dan and Nozomi Okuhara.

Interestingly, the first-ever edition in 1899 didn’t feature any singles competitions. D. W. Oakes and Stewart Marsden Massey (men’s doubles), D. W. Oakes and Daisy St. John (mixed doubles and Meriel Lucas/Mary Graeme (women’s doubles) were the first All England badminton champions.

With singles making its debut in 1900, Sydney H Smith was the first-ever All England Open badminton champion in men’s singles while Ethel Thomson became the first women’s singles champion.

Sir George Thomas became the first All England men’s champion in the post-World War 1 era, winning the coveted trophy in 1920.

To date, Sir George Thomas remains the most successful player in All England badminton history with a total of 21 titles (four men’s singles, nine men’s doubles and eight mixed doubles) to his name.

America’s Judy Devlin, with 17 titles (10 women’s singles and seven doubles), is the most-decorated female badminton player at the All England Open. Her tally of 10 singles titles is also the most by any women’s player in the tournament.

Indonesia’s Rudy Hartono, meanwhile, holds the record for most All England Open men’s singles titles with eight, seven of them coming in consecutive editions from 1968 to 1974, also a record in itself.

While the All England Open titles were monopolised by players from the British Isles, mostly English and a few Irish, till 1938, foreign participation was slowly increasing.

The year 1939 proved to be a landmark edition with Denmark’s Tage Madsen and Canada’s Dorothy Walton finally wrestling the men’s and women’s singles titles away from the British Isles. The mixed doubles title, too, was won by a Danish pair that year.

Ten years later, the All England Open got its first Asian champions in Malaysians Ooi Teik Hock and Teoh Seng Khoon, who clinched the men’s doubles title together.

The very next year, another Malaysian, Wong Peng Soon, became the first Asian singles champion in the tournament with what was the first of his four titles. Japanese legend Hiroe Yuki is the first Asian women’s singles winner (1969) at the All England Open.

India’s Prakash Padukone, in 1980, became India’s first All England champion. The win also made him the first men’s singles All England title winner in badminton’s Open era, which started in late 1979.

Pullela Gopichand (2001) is the only other Indian to win the prestigious title.

In the Open era, Asian players have dominated the All England stage, particularly Chinese shuttlers who started participating from 1982.

Chinese ace Lin Dan is the most successful player at All England in the Open era with six men’s singles titles to his name. Indonesia's Jonatan Christie is the reigning men’s champion while Spanish ace Carolina Marin holds the women’s crown.

The All England Open was not held from 1915 to 1919 and 1940 to 1946 due to World War 1 and 2, respectively.

All England Open badminton winners list