The opening round of the Gosling’s Bermuda Open at Port Royal Golf Course today will be a special occasion for Michael Sims.

The 54-hole tournament is back on Bermuda’s golfing calendar with a purse of $40,000 and a place in the Butterfield Bermuda Championship up for grabs, but for Sims the chance to honour the recent passing of Noel Van Putten matters more than the money

Sims’s group in the first round of the tournament also features fellow local professional Chaka DeSilva, whose late grandfather Van Putten had a profound influence on Sims’s development.

“I think it’s cool that I am playing with Chaka this year,” Sims said.

“I played with Mr Van Putten in my first Bermuda Amateur and that was a big event for me, so to have the Bermuda Open come back and to be playing with Chaka in the first round is special.

“It will be a good time to reflect on that day because of who Mr Van Putten was. He was a strong individual who had a lot of grace and was somebody to look up to when I was growing up, so it’s really neat for me that I get to play with Chaka.

“Mr Van Putten was a good amateur and a very strong individual that did things the right way. He was a beautiful human being and, quite frankly, I was shaking in my boots playing with him. But he had a grace about him that made me feel comfortable and taught me on etiquette and different things.”

Van Putten, who died last month at age 95, was a top amateur in his heyday and represented the island in 1995 at the Senior British Open at Royal Portrush Golf Course in Northern Ireland. He also served as Port Royal manager and was one of the island’s pioneering Black golfers who broke the colour barrier at a time of segregation in Bermuda when the sport was linked with elitism.

Despite the emotion involved, Sims is thrilled to see the Bermuda Open, which is regarded as the island’s flagship golf tournament, return following a ten-year hiatus.

“I think it’s awesome to have the Bermuda Open back “ he said. “It’s such a wonderful thing to have Gosling’s help bring it back.

“Back in the day this was a big event for Bermuda. We used to get a lot of foreign players come over and play in it and very good ones. You can go back in the archives and see players that have won tournaments on the PGA Tour that have played in the Bermuda Open. We had European Tour players, PGA Tour players and it’s really cool that it’s coming back because it has some history to it.”

The tournament is open to local and overseas professionals and top amateurs with an 8.0 handicap or below.

Sims, 46, is among a stellar group of local golfers, which includes Will Haddrell, Oliver Betschart and Kenny Leseur, who clinched the three available spots for the PGA Tour event in the Local Qualifier last week.

Also in the mix are past Bermuda Open winners Dwayne Pearman, Daniel Augustus and Nick Jones who are expected to be in contention for honours.

But Sims refuses to burden himself with expectations heading into the tournament, choosing instead to take matters in stride.

“This is golf and it don’t matter what we think,” he said.

“What we have one day we don’t the next, so I am looking forward to just competing and taking one step at a time.”