After winning the sixth of seven championship points she had earned to successfully defend her Scottish Open Grand Prix title at The Emirates last night, Kirsty Gilmour admitted to being even more emotional than she had been when achieving one of her major career goals in winning the event last year.

The 25-year-old had been top seed when she won the event last year, but found herself facing a much tougher challenge this time around, going in as third seed and knowing she would probably have to beat both the women ranked above her to take the title.

The toughest individual match was always likely to be against Cai Yanyan, this year’s no.1 seed, in the semi-final and Gilmour found herself in deep trouble in Saturday’s semi-final encounter when, having lost a tight first set 21-19, she fell 15-7 behind in the second and looked certain to be going out. However in a comeback reminiscent of the 10 successive points she won from 19-11 down to claim a Commonwealth Games silver medal four years ago, she then battled back to take the set 21-18, breaking her opponent’s resolve in doing so and going on to win 21-11 in the decider.

Yesterday, Gilmour was on top throughout, but after winning the first set 21-16 against second seed Line Kjaersfeldt, then moving 10-5 ahead in the second, she let things slip and lost it 21-18. She could have been forgiven for suffering a disturbing sense of déjà vu at that point, since the situation was similar to the 2015 final when, then ranked higher than the Dane, she let victory slip from a similar position and even after winning the first five points of the decider and maintaining a grip on it throughout, there were those anxious moments at the end as, having moved into a 2013 lead, a combination of errors and inspired shots from her opponent saw those five match points slip away before she clinched it 21-16, 18-21, 21-18.

“There’s no doubt I was getting tense,” Gilmour admitted. “There’s such a fine line between control and passiveness. You can’t afford to take too many risks but you can’t afford to take too few,. That is the balance and, I’m not going to lie, sometimes I got it today and sometimes I didn’t. I wouldn’t say it was my absolute A game today. There were plenty of clunky shots and shots I framed or made the wrong decision. I’m not going to say I played perfectly, but it was enough.”

However, having beaten a leading Chinese player and gained revenge for that devastating loss three years ago, Gilmour cherished this victory all the more, saying: “That was definitely more emotional than last year,. It could be taken pessimistically, but for me it was just totally realistic that I was just doing my best to get to the semi-final where I was seeded to get, then see what happened. I was still concentrating on good performances obviously... but if I managed to get that good feeling and make it happen then it would be a bonus. That realistic expectation took the pressure off me I think.”

The Emirates has become an ever more special venue for a woman who grew up in Lanarkshire before making her home in Glasgow. As well as becoming the first Scottish singles player to reach a Commonwealth Games final there four years ago and claiming this title last year, she also surpassed all expectations in reaching the World Championship quarter-final at the venue earlier in 2017. Last year’s performance represented an extraordinary response to the twin setback of suffering a career threatening knee injury and UK Sport’s decision to withdraw its funding from the GB Badminton squad. Ever upbeat, however, the current world no.28 believes she has now given herself a platform to build on in seeking to climb back up the rankings, having peaked at 14 just after the Olympics in Rio two years ago.

“People say you learn with the losses and the hard times, but a lot of the learning for me comes in winning and recognising how you did that,” she explained. “It’s not by chance. There are reasons why you win and if you can identify them and replicate them every single tournament then success breeds success and gives you momentum. You’ve got to get used to winning and then build on that momentum, then without complacency realise how good you are and use it as confidence rather than complacency.”