Having qualified for his third Buy.Com Tour event in a row, Bermudian pro golfer Michael Sims is raising the bar on his goals.

Fresh from shooting a qualifier-leading score of 64 on Monday to get into the Dayton Open in Ohio, USA, the rookie is setting himself greater challenges - and going after them.

"I am going to sit down and write a goal list - setting goals for the week and setting goals for the future. I'm going to raise my goals a little higher for the next couple weeks," he said yesterday.

Sims shot a spectacular eight-under-par, missing the course record at Pipestone Golf Club by just one shot to be the top qualifier for the Dayton Open which takes place at The Golf Club at Yankee Trace, starting tomorrow.

This will be his fourth Buy.Com Tour event overall and his third in succession, following the Knoxville Open in Tennessee and last week's Hershey Open in Pennsylvania. The 23-year-old will be aiming for better results and that's the purpose of his goal-setting.

"I need to get out of the mindset that I just need to make the (half-way) cut and I need to start concentrating on other things."

As for his performance in the qualifier, Sims said he made some long putts and, since the golf course is pretty short, it worked out well.

"I added it up and it came to 64 - pretty simple," he said, making it sound very straightforward before, with a chuckle, adding, "I wish it was always that simple."

This quip was an allusion to the see-saw results he has reaped in recent weeks. Last Friday, he crashed out of the Hershey Open with a half-way score of eight-over-par 150. Valiantly as he tried, he could not make it back from a first round of six-over, despite beginning his second round with a promising flourish to be at three-under through the first six holes. However, the back nine again proved his undoing.

"I was thinking that if I made a couple more birdies I might sneak in (to the half-way cut) but it just wasn't meant to be. I kept putting myself in a spot where I couldn't get up and down," he said, summing up last week.

In Knoxville, he made the cut but then faltered badly and faded from contention.

"It's nice to play a few weeks in a row. The experience is helping a lot. I went through a stretch where I kept having play-offs so it's nice to shoot a good score and not be sitting around wondering if you're going to make it.

"I can't think about what happened last week if it was bad. You've just got to forget those days. That's just the way golf is," surmised Sims philosophically.

As for the par-72 lay-out on whose back nine he will tee off at 2.20 p.m. (Bermuda time) tomorrow, the reviews are fairly comforting.

"From what I understand about this course, the winner has gone really low the last couple years so it's a golf course you can make a lot of birdies on. The greens are medium, not too big or small. Your putts aren't going to be too long.

"It's a good golf course so if I go out there and be patient hopefully good things will happen," said Sims who tees off at 9.45 a.m. for round two on Friday.