How do you beat a player who almost never loses?

For one game on Sunday, PV Sindhu had An Se Young where almost nobody gets her. Sindhu took the opening game of the French Open final 21-16. Then the world No. 1 won the next two, 21-11 and 21-12, for her third French Open title in a row.

It was Sindhu's 11th defeat to the South Korean, and also the first game she had taken off An since 2023. That one game is rare enough to make the question worth asking properly: how do you beat a player who almost never loses?

Very occasionally, and not by hitting harder. The one player who has beaten An this year did it by refusing to play the rallies An likes. Even then, it took her 11 attempts.

An's record is hard to take in. She is 24, the world No. 1, the Olympic champion, and this year she also won the World Championships in New Delhi. In 2026 she has won 66 of her 67 matches and 10 titles. Her 48 career titles have now passed Susi Susanti's record of 46.

Two more records are in reach before December. Last year she won 11 titles, a record for a single season, and the best win rate anyone has managed in a season stands at 94.8%. With 66 wins from 67 matches, An is at 98.5%.

Her strength is control, not power. An reaches shuttles other players let go, and then she decides where the next shot goes. Her opponents end up playing her game, on her terms, and that is usually when their mistakes start.

Every carrom board in an Indian housing society has one player like this. They never miss an easy shot, so you can't beat them with one brilliant strike. You beat them by never leaving them an easy one, which is much harder than it sounds.

Only one player has managed that this year. In the All England Open final in March, China's Wang Zhiyi beat An in straight games, 21-15, 21-19.

Reports from that final described Wang's game as patient and precise. Rather than trying to overpower An, she kept placing the shuttle where An couldn't take charge of the rally. Wang had lost their previous 10 meetings. The scoresheet below shows how lonely that win is in An's year.

Since that final, An has won 50 matches in a row. A long losing record against her clearly doesn't decide the next match, as Wang showed. Sindhu showed on Sunday that taking a game off her is possible too.

Turning a game into a match is the hard part. After winning the first game, Sindhu scored only 23 points across the next two, as An took the rallies back.

An's schedule gives her opponents a small opening. The world's top players are required to enter almost every major tournament, the rule we explained earlier this month. That means An spends week after week on court, while every opponent spends those same weeks studying her.

It is also taking a toll. After the French Open final, An said things were "very difficult" with her body right now, but that the pain was "still at a level that I can tolerate, so I'm continuing to play". Last year a knee injury forced her out of a semi-final.

She is expected to play about three more tournaments this year, including the season-ending BWF World Tour Finals. The next Indian to draw her will need what Wang had in March: the patience to keep the rally out of An's hands, point after point, for two full games.