Sheila at WTA event in Barcelona

Sheila Solsona feels like she has grown as a player lately, and her results are starting to back up this point of view.

Last week, Sheila played against Alicia Molik – a tour veteran from Australia – at the Marbella WTA event. Although affected by nerves in the first set, the match was quite competitive at the end – a one and half hour match resulting in a victory for Molik, 6-0 6-2.

This weekend, Sheila was awarded a Wild Card into the Barcelona WTA event – owned and managed by former Spanish great Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario. The field is very strong with the cut-off for main draw at #80. The top seed for the qualifying is Ioana Raluca Olaru, the WTA #81 from Romania.

Sheila was drawn against the number 2 seed in qualifying Tatjana Malek, world ranked #82 from Germany. Malek arrived from Marbella after losing in the quarter-finals against Carla Suarez, the defending champion. In the match Sheila had a lot of options – leading 2-0 and 4-3 before being broken at 4-4 and Malek served out the set. The second set was close until 3-2 but some double faults at inappropriate moments were costly.

We are very pleased to see how well Sheila coped against such good opposition and we hope she continues to progress as we think she can – it is now a matter of gaining more experience against better players and increasing her points total in smaller events.

Sheila at the Barcelona WTA event.