The 17-year-old Brisbane native shrugged off a hip injury to defeat Uzbek beanpole Jurabek Karimov in a topsy-turvy encounter on Rod Laver Arena, prevailing 6-2,1-6, 6-1 in an hour and 43 minutes.

The win capped off an excellent month for Anderson, who had upset American Tim Smyczek to qualify for the Brisbane International at the start of January after recently joining forces with former Australian Davis Cup stalwart Wayne Arthurs.

Anderson's wasn't the only triumph for Australian juniors on Saturday, with Alex De Minaur and Blake Ellis combining to take the boys doubles final over Slovak Lukas Klein and Czech Patrik Rikl – the locals winning the match tie-breaker 12-10, after the first two sets were split 3-6, 7-5.

Anderson – a wildcard into the boys draw – broke seventh-seed Karimov twice in the opening set, taking it in half an hour. But in a major reversal of fortunes, Karimov raced through the second set, at which point he took a medical time-out to work on a hip issue which had plagued him for much of the week.

It was at that moment that Anderson thought the match was lost. "At the end of the second I was thinking my chances are pretty slim," he said afterwards.

But the treatment seemed to do the trick. Anderson, born three months after his "idol" Lleyton Hewitt won his first ATP singles title, ran away with the match after surviving a break point in the opening game of the deciding set.

He becomes the fifth Australian boy to win his home grand slam event in the past decade, but doing so has been no certain route to senior success. The four Australians who had preceded Anderson in claiming this title – Bryden Klein (2007), Tomic (2008), Luke Saville (2012) and Kyrgios (2013) – have gone on divergent paths.

While Tomic and Kyrgios have both reached grand slam quarter-finals and were seeds in this year's men's draw at Melbourne Park, South Australian Saville is ranked 191 – and is better known for being the boyfriend of rising Australian female player Daria Gavrilova.

Klein, meanwhile, was suspended from the ATP Tour for six months after he made a racial slur towards South African Raven Klaasen during an event in 2009, and subsequently defected to Great Britain.

But Anderson said he wouldn't seek out any of the other recent winners for advice on how to handle the milestone. He said he had always expected plenty of himself. "I've always had a pretty good drive to be the best that I can possibly be," he said.

While Anderson was "scared" prior to his RLA debut, the venue was a long way off full for the match – which preceded the women's singles final. But if he follows the path of Tomic and Kyrgios, the next time Anderson takes to this court, it is likely to be considerably better patronised.