Elena Baltacha has been carrying the flag for British women's tennis for many years now, the character built on her Russian-Scottish heritage creating a fearsome competitor who never knows when she is beaten.

While Guernsey’s Heather Watson and England’s Laura Robson promise to deliver a golden era for Britain’s women, the long-term future also looks bright, with Anastasia Mikheeva, a 12-year-old girl based in Edinburgh, already making massive strides in the junior world. In August she won the singles and doubles titles in the under-12s at the British national championships, she is the European under-12s champion and has lost just three matches in her age group in 2011.

Under the guidance of her father, Andrei Mikheev, a former world-class fencer who was denied the chance to compete at the 1984 Olympic Games by the Eastern Bloc boycott, she has already accumulated a stack of trophies. And now she is also receiving advice and guidance from Baltacha and her coach, Nino Severino, something they all hope will establish the foundations for Anastasia to follow in Baltacha’s footsteps.

Baltacha, who will end the year inside the world’s top 50 for the first time, recently took time out from her busy training programme and her work at the Elena Baltacha Academy of Tennis to practise with Anastasia and was impressed by what she saw.

“She’s miles ahead of where I was at that age,” Baltacha said. “She’s very, very talented and she’s got an unbelievable attitude. She works very hard and she’s like a sponge. Anything we’d say, she absorbs because she really wants to learn and get better. That’s an amazing quality. From what I’ve heard, when she plays matches, she’s very focused and wants to win. She’s also a lot of fun, interesting and a really pleasant girl to be around.

“You don’t see players at her age who are that mentally strong, that prepared to sacrifice a lot of things to become a tennis player. That’s very rare. I think it’s the [Russian] culture, it’s that hunger. They want to succeed because it gives them a better life, it’s as simple as that.”

Anastasia’s father, Andrei, said his daughter could only improve by spending time with someone so professional. “For her, it’s a big boost when she trains with Baltacha,” he said. “She knows Baltacha plays with the Venus’s, the Clijsters of this world and she thinks ‘if she can do it, I can do it’.”

A tall girl with a good serve and two hands on both sides, Anastasia is certainly putting in the hours. Happy on and off the court, it’s something she clearly loves doing and her father knows that getting everything right will be crucial if she wants to make it.

“We train before school from 8 to 10.30am in the Craiglockhart Tennis Centre,” Mikheev said. “Then she goes to school and after that we train at a David Lloyd centre. She trains between 24 and 30 hours a week, depending on how tired she is. That includes tennis, fitness and skills. If you want to be the best in your profession you need to do something different to others, otherwise you’ll be like other people.”

In a sport littered with stories of over-zealous parents and burned out teenagers, Mikheev seems determined and focused rather than obsessive and over-bearing. It is a balancing act that Jim Pierce, the father of two-time Grand Slam winner Mary, and Damir Dokic, the father of Jelena, failed to manage.

“If you get it right, it’s very good; if you don’t get it right, it’s very difficult and it was difficult for a long time,” he said. “But when Anastasia started to win things and she matured a little, she started to understand why she’s doing it, why we’re putting so much effort into it and why she needs to train that hard.

“Now the situation is very, very good because as her Dad I can monitor her happiness and I can monitor her recovery levels because I see her 24 hours a day. The important thing is that tennis shouldn’t be her whole life so we don’t talk tennis at home.

“On the tennis court I am her coach and at home I am her Dad. On the tennis court she behaves differently towards me than in everyday life because it’s like two different attitudes. On the tennis court I would be more demanding to push her to the next level, whereas in life I know how hard she works and I am much more lenient. I enjoy doing the coaching because she’s a lot of fun to be around.”

Mikheev first noticed his daughter’s talent when she was just three and he has masterminded her progress to this point with considerable expertise.

“Since I went through all this process, I know what it takes,” he said. “Fencing is not that dissimilar from tennis, it’s a one-on-one sport with a lot of psychology going on. It’s very fast and it’s very technical. So I know all the right things that need to be taught at this level and for a few years’ time.”

But the most impressive thing about Mikheev is that he recognises his limits. Aided by funding from the Lawn Tennis Association, a number of sponsors and his own salary as a company director, Anastasia’s tennis is progressing nicely. Realising that the physical side of her game requires more work, Mikheeva consulted Severino.

“We’re looking at an overall fitness and conditioning package for her,” Severino said. “We’re working on explosive power. Probably the main thing that’s missing at the moment is the multi-joint training, which is like Olympic lifting training. The beauty of multi-joint training is that it’s the only type of training that’s going to give you an all-over body development.”

Based in Ipswich and on the road with Baltacha for several months each year, Severino will work remotely with Andrei and Anastasia, finding them a good strength and conditioning coach and educating them about nutrition. “The girl is tough,” Severino said. “Russian stock, Russian regime type training. The girl’s an animal when it comes to training, she will train all day.”

The key now, for everyone concerned, is to get the pace of Anastasia’s development right. Push too hard too soon and she’ll burn out; go too slowly and she could easily lose interest. “If he gets that right, I think we’ve got a nice little player there for the future,” Severino said. “He’s doing the right thing, he’s looking around and saying ‘they’re the people who can help me’. He’s very receptive to that, he’s very intelligent and he’s listening.”

If she continues to progress, the junior Grand Slams will be the next natural step but Anastasia’s father is focused on the long term. “If she starts to play [too much] very early on tour, she’s not going to develop her game,” he said. “We have an opportunity to develop her game, to have 20 shots. It’s like golf, you can play with three clubs or you can play with seven clubs and you know what to do with them.

“Even now I don’t know how good she can be. She’s good but it’s so tough to make it. But we’re trying to maximise her potential. It’s very difficult to say she’s definitely going to be there but she’s on the right track, she’s doing the right things, we’re trying to develop her long-term, to make her game complete enough to compete when she is 18 or 20.”

And Baltacha’s advice? “Be patient, keep working hard, keep trying to improve and that’s it,” she said. “She’s well equipped with her skills and her attitude is definitely there. All she can do is just keep working hard.”