Slovenia's Kaja Juvan is on an upward curve. A strong junior, having reached a career-high girls' rankings of No. 5 last January during a year that saw her claim the doubles title at 2017 Wimbledon and reach the Finals of the 2017 ITF Junior Masters, Juvan has hit the ground running in her transition to the professional game - claiming her first Pro Circuit titles at $25,000 level this summer. In the first in a three-part blog series for the ITF, Juvan opens up about her recent rise, her team and how having a mental coach is helping her reach the next level.

I feel like I'm playing really well at the moment. I've been working on a lot of things and I feel like I'm just starting to go higher and higher. I'm not there yet and I have to work harder and harder still, but it's just another step towards what I want.

I was struggling a bit at the beginning of the year because [my team and I] were working on a lot of stuff. I lost a couple of first rounds so I'm really glad that I won two ITF $25,000 tournaments (in Balatonboglar in May and Ystad in mid-June). I made another final (in Andijan) and a semi-final (in Uzbekistan) [both at ITF $25,000 level], so I see progress and it has been really good motivation for the next tournaments.

We've done a lot of work this year on moving and taking the ball earlier, but movement has been the big focus. I used to compensate with other parts of my game and I played more on feeling, but now that we've worked on my movement I'm able to actually be on each ball and hit strong. Before that I was struggling a bit and just trying to get the ball in. Physically we've been working on a lot of stuff, but we've also been working on the technical side too. I have a mental coach and she's helping me to stay more focussed during a match and to keep my concentration for a longer time.

My coaching team is quite big now. Robi Coken, my coach, has been with me for a long time - maybe 10 years! He was a young coach when we started, back when I was really young. My conditioning coach is Miran Kotnik. He was working at our club, and so I started to have more and more physical training. When I started getting some results we worked more seriously and I began to have more individual sessions, and a fitness programme.

We had been looking for a mental coach for a while, because this is really important in tennis, and then we found Tjasa (Jezernik). She used to play tennis and I feel like she's been able to help me a lot. Everyone on the team talks a lot to each other. It's working really well right now. They're here to help me and help me climb as high as I can in the sport.

Tennis is a really mental game but everything that you do outside of tennis affects your game too. If I have some problems in my personal life, I can talk to Tjasa. We have a lot of different exercises that we work through. We work on meditation, we visualise the match before the game and go through some points in my head. She's really helping me with that.

If I have a problem on court, like for example the way I start the second set, we go through the situation, start exercises, and then I will do those exercises during the matches. It's a lot of focus on breathing and a lot of self-talk, it just keeps me calm and it keeps me confident. Even in training if I'm having a hard time finding willpower, that's where she steps in and helps me to get through the end of the training on a high level.

Kaja Juvan was speaking to the ITF's Jamie Renton, who put this blog together on her behalf. Her second blog, in which she discusses the challenge of playing away from her favoured clay, making her Fed Cup debut, and reveals who inspires her in the game, will be published on Monday.