Bermuda's golfers literally dug themselves into a hole at the Nations Cup yesterday, leaving themselves with a very slim chance of qualifying for next month's World Cup.

The Island's pair of Dwayne Pearman and Michael Sims are three-under par after three rounds at El Tigre Golf Club in Puerto Vallarta and are ninth out of 14 teams as they head into today's final round needing to finish in the top two to advance to the World Cup.

However, with Chile still controlling the leaderboard at 17-under followed by hosts Mexico and a slew of other countries, Bermuda will not only need to play their best but also hope that most of their rivals falter.

"There's two spots and I would say there's an outside chance for the second spot but it would require a very good final round tomorrow (today). We would need to shoot a 65 and get in the clubhouse and see what happens for the other teams.

"That (65) is well within the potential of these two players," said non-playing captain Kim Swan, giving his assessment to The Royal Gazette last night.

"In golf you're never out of it. Today (yesterday), those four holes where our ship went a little awry are the difference between us being within two or three shots of second place right now, notwithstanding the fact that we weren't converting our putts today."

The four holes of which he spoke were the 13th through 16th holes during the first of two rounds played yesterday.

Sims and Pearman began their round of alternate shot relatively well with birdies at the fourth and sixth holes to make the turn at two-under for the round and six-under for the tournament.

However, they ran into all kinds of trouble on the back nine with the 13th hole proving truly unlucky as they carded a triple bogey and sunk further with bogeys on the 14th, 15th and 16th holes.

That nightmarish stretch sent them plummeting from six-under to even par overall.

"We had a tee shot that lodged underneath the fairway bunker and we opted to play a safety shot to get the ball out but we were unable to get the ball out of the bunker and it went underneath the lip.

"After an exhaustive search we found the ball and had to take an unplayable lie in the bunker. We missed the little putt and ended up making a triple bogey," said Swan explaining the horrors on the 13th hole.

In the third round later in the afternoon, they fared better. Playing four-ball, they made birdies on the fourth, eighth and tenth holes. However, they missed many opportunities to advance up the standings and now have all the work to do today.

"The guys are playing well enough to be in a better position but golf is that way. We had a bad stretch of holes and even after that we put ourselves back in good positions but didn't convert our putts. We missed a lot of putts inside ten to 12 feet."