Thing is, if you're talking from a purely technical point of view you'd have just as good a case for saying John Dowland is the best banjo player in the UK. (Not sure what his parents were thinking when they gave him that name! Probably wanted him to become a musician...)

He's also impressively young. In terms of technical ability he's certainly on a par with Dan Walsh. Different style of playing - Dowland's 3-finger, and coming from that Trishka/Bela Fleck jazzy fusion school of 'newgrass'. He was the first Brit to win that national US competition.

But I can't say I'm really a fan of that type of playing. In any school - fast bluegrass or fast clawhammer tends to get a bit mechanistic and leaves me ultimately cold.

My fave banjoists are probably Frank Profitt and Peggy Seeger. Neither of whose playing was/is exactly flashy. They played banjo as an organic part of being a singer singing a song.