A golfer's life is full of decisions - what club to take, whether to lay up short or shoot for the green, whether to take your caddie's advice or trust your intuition.

Those decisions may alter the way a tournament goes, but later this week Michael Sims will make a decision that will almost certainly change him forever.

Sims, honoured as Bermuda's 2001 Male Athlete of the Year at the 21st Government Sports Awards on Saturday night, has to decide which one of three agents he will entrust with his career in this his rookie year on the professional circuit.

The player, who left the amateur scene behind for last week's Canadian Tour Winter Qualifying School at Champion's Gate in Orlando, Florida, has offers from IMG, who manage Tiger Woods, Octagon who have Davis Love III and Tom Kite among their number, and the Woolf agency who boast Brad Faxon and Brett Quigley.

Sometime this week he will have to sign on the dotted line.

“You obviously have to like the people you are working with,” Sims said of how he was going to make his choice. “I want to be with them for a substantial amount of time - I don't want to just pick somebody for a year and have a year's work go to waste.

“It's a tough decision for me to make right now but I am going to have to do it. I'm going to talk to my pro (coach) a little bit, sit down and get down to the nitty gritty.”

His agent's first job will be to get him playing.

“Hopefully they will help me get an exemption into a Canadian tour event, anything,” he said. “They have people that can help me do that.”

That is the best Sims can hope for as far as the Canadian Tour is concerned as he failed to qualify in Florida.

Through the five round tournament, Sims carded rounds of 77, 72, 68, 71, and 74 for a total of 362. That left him one shot shy of getting an earned non-exempt card and five shots away from an earned exempt card.

“I went in with the expectation of coming out with a card,” he said. “I started off kind of slow with a 77 and worked my way back into it over the next three rounds and made the cut and was in a really good position to get at least conditional status.

“But the last day was a little bit of a struggle. I only had one birdie and I wasn't making the putts I needed to make.”

Sims said he had no-one to blame but himself.

“I just wasn't seeing my lines very well,” he said. “I was actually rolling the ball well but it came down to me not reading the putts, that's all.”

Sims said he didn't think the performance would have a negative effect on him, quite the opposite.

“I was upset but just give me a few minutes and I get over it pretty fast,” he said. “I don't think it was a setback, I think it's only going to help me get to where I want to get and move forward.

“I am only one shot out of getting my conditional status and five shots out of getting my full card. You think about that and look at five rounds . . . I could tell you four spots in the last round where I could have been two or three under. But that's not the way it went - you have to look at the positives and not the negatives.”

It was the positives that led to Sims being presented with the Male Athlete of the Year Award.

Last year he reached the quarter-finals of the US Amateur Championships, won the New England Open, came second in the LSU Spring Invitational, tied for seventh in the El Diablo Intercollegiate Tournament and came second in the Furman Intercollegiate.

He also won the Big Five Tourney, was runner-up at the Atlantic 10 Championships and had another second in the URI Cleveland Spring Invitational and won the North and South Amateur Championship. Just for good measure he also won the Players Amateur Championship, shooting a course record in the process, and placed fifth in the Porter Cup at Niagara Falls.

Sims, who lives in Rhode Island, was also voted New England player of the year and in the magazine Golf Week was ranked fifth in the US Amateur rankings. It would have been a travesty of huge proportions had he not scooped the coveted award in his homeland.

Sims, whose father Bruce broke down on receiving the Athlete of the Year award on his son's behalf, said he was greatly honoured.

“I am very proud of it,” he said. “The summer I had was unbelievable. All the support I got from back home helped me with that success.”

Particular thanks had to go to his parents, the aforementioned Bruce and his mother Carol.

“They are very important to me. Without them I wouldn't be where I am,” he said. “The support they give me is unbelievable. If everybody had the support I have the world would be a lot better place.”

Sports Awards winners

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