Bermuda Tour pro Michael Sims can hardly wait to get in a few practice rounds when he returns home for the holidays later this month.

And for good reason.

Sims will make his Nationwide Tour debut at the $550,000 Movistar Panama Championships at the challenging 6,937-yard, par-70 Panama Golf Club, starting on January 24, 2007, where the eventual winner will pocket $99,000 in prize earnings.

The field of 132 players for next month’s event — that will be televised on The Golf Channel — will feature as many as 27 former PGA Tour winners, including six-time winner Steve Pate and four-time winners Chip Beck, Notah Begay III and David Edwards.

PGA Tour player Vance Veazey won last year’s tournament.

Bermuda’s Sims grabbed local headlines last week when he became the first Bermudian golfer to advance to the lucrative Nationwide Tour after six pressure-packed qualifying rounds at the PGA Tour Q School in La Quinta, California.

The 27-year-old Southampton resident spent the remainder of last week celebrating his remarkable achievement — arguably the biggest locally since UBP senator Kim Swan earned a spot playing on the European Tour — with friends, but can’t wait to get back into the swing of things when he returns to the Island.

“I will be practising when I get home and I am obviously excited to come home to spend the holiday with family and friends. I actually haven’t seen my family since qualifying school began. So I’m really looking forward to returning,” Sims told The Royal Gazette.

The Nationwide Tour is essentially a developmental tour for the PGA Tour that boasted a total of 31 tournaments this year with prizemoney ranging from $450,000 up to $750,000.

A place in the top 20 Nationwide earners at the end of the year means a membership card for the following year’s PGA Tour.

Most Nationwide events are held in the US, but in January and February this year tournaments were staged in Panama, Australia and New Zealand.

It was initially called the Ben Hogan Tour when formed in 1990. In 1993 it became the Nike Tour and in 2000 the Buy.com Tour.

Nationwide Tour tournaments operate similarly to typical PGA Tour events in that they are all 72-hole strokeplay events with a cut made after 36 holes.

Event winners receive 18 percent of the total prize purse, as on the PGA Tour, and this translates into a six-figure cheque for the winner at most Nationwide tournaments.

The 2006 season will see the Tour playing in three countries outside the US and in 22 states. The 31 events will offer purses of nearly $17 million, a record for the tour.

Since 1997, a player who has won three tournaments in one year on the Nationwide Tour has received immediate promotion to the PGA Tour for the remainder of the year.

“It is very gratifying knowing that I have a great place to play and develop my game next year,” Sims added.