Is Akane Yamaguchi the greatest women’s singles World Championship figure, with 5 medals, of which 3 are gold

2021 Olympic champion Yufei, who had rolled her ankle but still managed to beat World No 1 An Se-young in the semis, was restricted in her trademark movement tracking to the backcourt, given the injury impeded change in direction. But the Chinese, easily the cleverest and most intuitive shuttler of this generation, who had taken down Tai Tzu-ying at Olympics and the compulsive Tour-winning Korean to make finals, couldn’t do much against the humblest, hard-working champion with a relentless work rate in retrieving everything covering the court.

Yamaguchi barely gets expressive, save for her tight smiles when cameras goad, and hardly ever speaks more than a few words. She has remained tireless all these years, repeating her win against Yufei from the 2022 final. The greatest talents from Thailand, Japan, Korea, India, Spain and Taiwan have now assembled to deny the Chinese the crown, and Yufei, a canny player with exquisite footwork and anticipation, remains without a title still, after facing tough times with motivation issues. But on Sunday, she ran into a metronome, who also became the greatest Japanese shuttler, surpassing Kento Momota.

The ankle aside, Yufei had no answers to Yamaguchi’s defense, which asks more questions than her attack. She dived, parried body shots, stuck her racquet out like an extendable charm across her body, jumped concave, and still hit snappy shots like a human catapult. At 5’2″, Yamaguchi is one of the shortest shuttlers in women’s singles, but her court mileage will consistently log double that of most.

Very early in the piece, at 6-2 in the opening set, Yufei threw all her tricks at every corner – net drops, far tosses, half smashes – but Yamaguchi picked everything and wrapped up with a straight smash on Yufei’s backhand.

When Yufei busted her ankle, An Se-young had attempted to make her move more, and ended up exhausting herself. Yamaguchi tested the Chinese on the lunge for sure, but mostly it was her signature drops that precisely fell at the net. She’s been playing them for a dozen years, with no perceptible loss in sting. Yamaguchi is the storm under the natural veneer of a lull – no screaming, no arguing, no fist pumping, not even celebration roars, and she’s got 3 World titles. The only time she might actually look at her opponent is to apologise for net cords, unfailingly. Nothing fazes her.

In 2018, when winning one of her two bronzes, there’s an iconic podium photograph of the Japanese boggled wide-eyed watching Marin bite her gold medal at Nanjing. The commentators had mentioned how the whole idea was startling for her. On Sunday, Yamaguchi simply stepped up on the podium, lost in thought, staring at her flag rise up. You couldn’t tell it was her third.

FINALS RESULTS:

Mixed doubles: Chen Tang Jie/Toh Ee Wei [4] 21-15, 21-14 Jian Zhen Bang/Wei Ya Xin [2]

Women’s singles: Akane Yamaguchi [5] 21-9 21-13 Chen Yufei [4]

Women’s doubles: Pearly Tan / Thinaah Muralitharan [2] 14-21, 22-20, 17-21 Liu Sheng Shu/Tan Ning [1]

Men’s singles: Kunlavut Vitidsarn [3] 21-19, 10-21, 18-21 Shi Yu Qi [1]

Men’s doubles: Seo Seungjae/Kim Won Ho [1] 21-17 21-12 Chen Bo Yang/Liu Yi [11]