It was baked beans and sausage along with hash browns and a little bit of egg. Every morning at Wimbledon, that’s what Ronit Karki ate for breakfast.

“If you combine all of them into one bit, it wasn’t too bad, it was pretty tolerable,” he said.

For lunch it was Alfredo pasta with chicken and mushrooms, the same kind of lunch he eats at home before tournaments. He took shots of ginger each day, downing them to help with digestion.

Bedtime was around 11pm every night to ensure proper rest. And the hat he wore during matches was always the same, a white Lacoste cap that 'got pretty crusty by the end of the tournament'.

When you’re on the kind of incredible roll Karki was on in July, you do everything the same each day. No need to antagonize the tennis gods.

It’s been six weeks since the craziest nine days of Karki’s tennis career, and life has returned pretty much to normal.

He’s a little more famous now, with dozens of family and friends at his first-round US Open Junior Championships match and he won 6-3 7-6(4) against Slovenia's Ziga Sesko. More people know his name (pronounced RON-it), and a few little kids brought signs with that name on it.

This is what happens when your career zooms from 20 to 120 in the span of a week. Entering the boys' event at Wimbledon as a qualifier, he won two matches to qualify, then ripped off five more wins in the main draw and got to play for a Wimbledon title on Court No. 1 in front of 10,000 fans.

Karki finally ran out of steam in the championship final, losing to Ivan Ivanov of Bulgaria 6-2 6-3.

Still, the 17-year-old bound for Stanford University next fall, was the first qualifier to reach a Grand Slam singles final since Noah Rubin in 2014, and only the fifth ever to reach the final match. It’s enough to make a kid’s head spin.

“I’m still just a junior tennis player, maybe a little more well-known, but that’s it,” said Karki. “But yeah, it was such a great experience.”

Trilok Karki, Ronit’s father, doesn’t usually travel to his son’s tournaments; he’s been through the junior tennis scene before, with older daughter Naomi, currently at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

He came to Wimbledon because, you know, it’s Wimbledon, and it was the first time any of the family had been there.

Still, he was cautious. He only expected to stay through qualifying, since Ronit had to win two matches just to get in. The plan was, regardless of how Ronit did, to stay in England through the Fourth of July, and enjoy London until then (qualifying began on July 3).

“We’ve been in tennis a long time, and we’ve learned never to look more than one match ahead,” Trilok said.

Karki’s dream run almost never happened at all, as he survived a third-set tiebreak, 10-6 in the second round of qualifying. A few points here or there, and he’s watching the rest of the tournament from the sidelines.

After reaching the main draw, Karki and family finally got their credentials to enter the hallowed grounds of SW19.

“That is when it started to feel real," Trilok said. “That’s when I told my friends that we were at Wimbledon.”

Trilok had booked a plane ticket to return home to New Jersey for Tuesday night. That day, his son had won his second round match, and most unusually, Trilok and his wife, Kanchan, sat together at the match.

“We make each other too nervous to sit together,” I guess,” Trilok said.

So on Tuesday, Trilok’s bags were packed, and Kanchan was going to stay.

Normally, Ronit is fine with Trilok leaving. This time, it was different.

“He said he would like me to stay; actually I think he said ‘it would be nice if you could stay,’” Trilok recalled. “I don’t think he’d ever said that before.”

Ronit had a personal and a tennis reason for wanting his dad around.

“I just feel like keeping him there I would have a little bit like kind of extra motivation,” Karki said. “Like you know, I'm keeping him here, I gotta put up a fight at least. He’s missing work for this.

“It's bigger than just me playing.”

As the wins piled up, third round, quarter-final, semi-final, Karki wouldn’t allow himself to dream or celebrate what he was doing.

“I made myself downplay what was happening, in the moment, being in the quarters at Wimbledon, the semis, all of that, so I could stay focused on the next match and keep myself humble,” Ronit said. “I knew every day that I could be going home on a plane tomorrow.”

Finally, Karki got to Court No. 1 on the final day of the tournament, playing in front of by far the biggest crowd he’d ever seen.

“It’s such a weird feeling to step on the court with that many eyes on you,” he recalled. “And then we started playing and everything was moving so fast around me. It definitely didn’t feel like a normal match.”

Six weeks later, Trilok still smiles at every memory of Wimbledon. He only wishes his tennis-loving father, Ram, was here to see it (he passed two years ago).

“We go back and look at the pictures and it’s just something we’ll remember forever,” Trilok added. “But now we’re looking forward, and the path hasn’t changed. Just more people are supporting us now.”

A full list of results from the 2025 US Open Junior Championships is available here