Lakshya Sen rises to best ever world rank after German Open heroics

Lakshya Sen fought bravely through an injury in the final against 3-time World Junior champion Kunlavut Vitidsarn and beat World No. 1, Victor Axelsen, in a heroic week at the German Open 2022 over the last week.

He rose to his best-ever world rank - 11 - when the BWF rankings were released on Monday, March 14. Lakshya had said at the beginning of the year that his aim for the year would be to break into the top 10.

READ | "I want to break into Top 10 by year-end," says Lakshya Sen

He displaced Kidambi Srikanth as No.11. This is the first time Sen is the highest-ranked Indian in men's singles.

Lakshya Sen will be heading into the All England Open with this and some renewed confidence, backed by some great wins against World No. 5 Indonesian Anthony Ginting in the pre-quarters of the German Open and later, Axelsen in the semis.

Sen, who is a World Championships bronze medallist and started the season with an India Open Super 500 win in January, is on a roll of his won. He got his first win against a top-5 player at this event when he defeated the Indonesian and is on a massive upward climb currently.

Lakshya's got 5950 ranking points as the runner-up of the German Open, a Superseries 300 tournament, to take him above Srikanth in the rankings on Monday.

BWF rankings points are generally based on a player's top 10 best performances over the last 52 weeks, but due to the coronavirus ranking freeze rankings are currently calculated from a period starting from 1 January 2019. Points are won depending on which stage the player reaches in tournaments of different levels.

If the rankings are unfrozen to consider the last 52 weeks, Lakshya would have risen to world number 3.

BWF Rankings Top 12 (Men's Singles) - as of March 15

Viktor Axelsen

Kento Momota

Anders Antonsen

Chou Tien Chen

Anthony Ginting

Chen Long

Lee Zii Jia

Jonatan Christie

Loh Kean Yew

Ng Ka Long Angus

Lakshya Sen

Srikanth Kidambi