“It was mad when I landed, very crowded,” Bhambri told Newsline. “There were so many people — I didn’t expect such big numbers. I had thought there would be 10 or 15-odd people but there were hundreds. I am very thankful to all of them for supporting me.”

While vindication is not a word the Bhambri family may want to use, a big win like this, in the face of odds that once deemed such a feat impossible, is a tale in itself. For a start, there were the naysayers. “This is Yuki’s dream, and this is our dream too,” mother Indu Bhambri said. “We have been working hard, and though everyone said we were crazy going after a sport where the returns don’t seem to be a lot, we kept at it.

“Most of my relatives do not know Yuki, they have never seen him — the first time they saw him was on TV. But all that running around has paid off.”

The champion didn’t have a sponsor last year but worked with whatever he had and, after his best year on tour, was ranked world number 2 in the junior category as the calendar ended. But the teenager knows it’s going to get tougher without money: “If the sponsors do not come forward now, then they never will. I don’t know what else to do — I’m baffled. But my work is not going to stop with this title; there’s a long way to go.”

Yuki, cousin of tennis-playing sisters Ankita and Sanaa, trains at the Siri Fort Sports Complex under Aditya Sachdeva’s coaching, and regularly visits the Nick Bolletieri Tennis Academy in Florida, USA.

Having announced his intention of playing more on the senior circuit, Yuki said he will have to grit his teeth and get used to something he hasn’t come to know from close quarters on the junior tour: losing. “I’ll have to get myself to come to terms with losses, and I’ll have to be patient.”

The work, though, will have to halt for a week, as he is under strict instructions not to pick up a tennis racquet in order to get some rest. Yuki will head to Florida next week for another round of training, before going to Miami for an ATP tournament in March, where he has got a qualifying wild card.

But even without the racquet, there will be a few trips to Siri Fort complex, where Yuki will look to spend some time on his latest passion: golf. “My friend gave me a set he doesn’t use, so I have been playing quite a bit of golf. I’ll also play as much cricket as I can during this week.”