Kuala Lumpur: The Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings returned to live 52-week rankings on August 2, 2022, after the system was frozen on March 17, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For each week of the newly published rankings starting on August 2, 2022, four weeks of historical World Ranking points will be removed from Week 12 of 2019.
The current World No. 1 men’s doubles pair is Indonesia’s Marcus Fernaldi Gideon/Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo first clinched the world number one spot on March 16, 2017. Although they dropped one place in April of 2017 and dropped to World No. 3 in June of 2017, they managed to regain their World No. 1 position quickly. Since March 16, 2017, the Indonesian duo has stayed at the World’s No. 1 spot for a total of 214 weeks.
Nevertheless, the Minions are likely to be replaced by the current World No. 2 Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi of Japan when the next batch of BWF rankings is released on September 20th.
The Japanese men’s doubles pair will also become the first Japanese men’s doubles pair to ever be ranked World No. 1.
Reasons behind Takuro Hoki/Yugo Kobayashi’s improvement in world rankings include winning the 2021 World Championships, the 2021 Denmark Open, the 2021 Indonesia Masters, and the 2021 BWF World Tour Finals. In 2022, they also won the Thailand Open and Malaysia Open.
Meanwhile, from 2021 to 2022, both Gideon/Sukamuljo only won the 2021 Hylo Open and the 2021 Indonesia Open. They didn’t win any titles in 2022 mostly because Gideon had to undergo surgery to remove a small bone growing in his ankle in April 2022, and he seemed to still recover from that surgery.
