Taking a page out of tennis, here are the MS players that have performed best in the four 'majors' of badminton in the 21st century. Australian Open Andrew Smith 2 Shoji Sato 1 Ismail Saman 1 John Moody 1 Dionysius Hayom Rumbaka 1 Nguyen Tien Minh 1 Sho Sasaki 1 Chen Jin 1 Tian Hou Wei 1 French Open Lee Chong Wei 2 Liew Daren 1 Taufik Hidayat 1 Lin Dan 1 Peter Gade 1 Stanislav Pukhov 1 Chen Jin 1 Marc Zweibler 1 Luo Yigang 1 Abynshyam Gupta 1 All England Lin Dan 4 Chen Hong 2 Chen Long 1 Chen Jin 1 Lee Chong Wei 1 Muhammad Hafiz Hashim 1 Pullela Gopichand 1 Peter Gade 1 (won in 1999) U.S. Open Peter Gade 1 Taufik Hidayat 1 Vladimir Ivanov 1 Sho Sasaki 1 Rajiv Ouseph 1 Andrew Dabeka 1 Lee Tsuen Seng 1 Yousuke Nakanishi 1 Hsieh Yu Hsing 1 Kendrick Lee 1 Chien Yu-Hsiu 1 Lee Hyun-Il 1 Players with 2 or more Grand Slam Titles 5 Lin Dan (4 Wimbledon, 1 Roland-Garros) 3 Chen Jin (1 Australian Open, 1 Wimbledon, 1 Roland-Garros) 3 Peter Gade (1 Roland-Garros, 1 Wimbledon, 1 U.S. Open) 3 Lee Chong Wei (2 Roland-Garros, 1 Wimbledon) 2 Andrew Smith (2 Australian Open) 2 Sho Sasaki ( 1 Austrailian Open, 1 U.S. Open) 2 Chen Hong (2 Wimbledon) 2 Taufik Hidayat (1 Roland-Garros, 1 U.S. Open) That's a who's who in world badminton right there. No surprise that Lin Dan have won the most majors among them all. Meanwhile, both Chen Jin and Peter Gade were one title away from completing a career grand slam, which would have made either one of them the best badminton player of all-time.
So what would be the badminton equivalents of these? Probably events that were held annually/biannually. All England Superseries Finals One of the Asian SS/SSP Maybe WC's Would be the ones for me.
Four majors could be (made up tournaments) China open All England open South East Asia open(rotate host country) Denmark open [MENTION=32285]Arsene Lupin[/MENTION] fun list you got there pretty crazy end results. Was John moody up their with the best and we just never noticed
Looking at prestige, and the quality of past winners, it should be All England, along with 3 of Malaysia/Indonesia/Denmark/China/Korea Open. All five have tremendous badminton tradition, and it's pretty hard to separate them to be honest. No surprise that all of them (Malaysian Open for next season) are Premier Events. And yes, the All England Championship is way more prestigious than the World Championships.
The major titles in badminton, in my own opinion, are (in order of prestige) : (1) Olympics (2) World Championships (3) Thomas Cup/Uber Cup (4) Asian Games (5) Sudirman Cup (6) All England (7) SS Finals and other PSS events (8) Other SS events (9) Asian Badminton Championship (which is a GPG event) (10) European Championship The ranking points for events can be found here: http://www.bwfbadminton.org/page.aspx?id=15370 For Chinese players, however, some may say the most prestigious event is China's National Games, which are held once every four years--more important than World Championships!! The first European Games will be held in 2015. We will see how that will fare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Games
Your right I forgot about Korea. I suppose then if Badminton were to have official majors there should be 6 of them, all of which you mentioned. Would probably serve badminton better than relying on Olympics etc.
I just realised that Xu/Ma obtained 9460 points during Sudirman Cup 2013. PSS events winners can get 11,000. I guess PSS is more prestigious than Sudirman (based on ranking points alone).
To me, there's always something special about the Thomas Cup: 1. Thomas Cup 2. All England 3. Olympics 4. Asian Games 5. Sudirman Cup 6. World Championships The Asian Games seems pretty highly-rated, but it's strange that nobody really cares about the Badminton Asian Championships. Remember when Sony Dwi Kuncoro was the undisputed 'Asian champion' for quite a long time? It's also strange that you don't really get actual trophies in badminton. But the ones that do have truly awesome trophies - the Thomas Cup is great, and the All England has a lovely MS cup as well.