An Se-young: 55 wins in a row, 71 wins in 72 matches this season
After the Korea Open, Korean outlets count a 55-match winning run and a 98.6% win rate; the Indonesian record they cite stands at 59.
What happened
After her Korea Open final win on 8 November 2026, Korean outlets put numbers on An Se-young's season. Star News Korea reports 72 matches played this year for 71 wins and one defeat, a 98.6% win rate, and says her winning run has reached 55 matches since the All England final in March, the one match she lost this year, against China's Wang Zhiyi. The same article lists her run of titles this season, from the Malaysia and India Opens early in the year to the Korea Open, and says it is her sixth consecutive international title since the World Championships in August.
The record they compare it to
Money Today, republishing an OSEN report, writes that Indonesia's Susi Susanti won 59 women's singles matches in a row in 1993 and 1994. By its arithmetic, An would tie that mark with four more wins and pass it with a fifth. It adds that winning all five matches at the BWF World Tour Finals (Hangzhou, 9 to 13 December) would give her both a 60-match run and a 12th title of the season. We have not checked the Susanti figure against a second source.
What she said, and her schedule
According to the same report, An said she is grateful for the "greatest of all time" talk, but that she still has many days of playing ahead and will think about it when her career is over. It also says she is expected to rest and to skip the Kumamoto Masters and the Hong Kong Open because of accumulated fatigue in her ankle and knee; the sources describe this as what is "known" rather than an announcement we could see.
Why it matters
These are counts, not predictions: the Finals are a five-match event with the best eight players, and nothing is certain before they are played.