Surprise news about winner on Nationwide Tour

RISING "AUSSIE" STAR MICHAEL
SIM IS AN ABERDONIAN!


By COLIN FARQUHARSON

What would you say if I told you that Richie Ramsay was preceded as the world’s No 1 ranked amateur golfer by another ABERDONIAN in 2004-2005?
It’s true! “Australian” Michael, pictured right, who held that lofty status and won a tournament in his rookie pro season on his 22nd birthday this past October on the US Nationwide Tour … was born in Aberdeen!
With the help of the Australian PGA Tour and Michael Sim’s management team, I have been able to put some substance to the mystery “Australian” who will be rubbing shoulders with Tiger Woods & Co next season.
Michael Sim spent his early years with his parents in the Aberdeen suburbs of Westhill and then Cults before mum and dad decided the family had a better future in Australia. They emigrated Down Under – Perth, Western Australia, to be precise - in 1991 when Michael was six years old.
“I actually started playing golf before I left Aberdeen,” says Michael. “I was only five years old when my dad got me into it. I broke par for a course for the first time when I was 14.”
Michael says that to date the most satisfying moment in golf was being ranked No 1 amateur in the world in 2004-2005 following victories in a string of events in Australia and New Zealand. He was a member of Australia’s three-man team in the 2004 Eisenhower Trophy and last year won the NZ open stroke-play championship with a four-round total that included his lowest ever score of nine-under-par 63.
His ambition is to win the US Masters. Why?
“It’s probably the tournament that I watched the most when I was a kid and, maybe because of that, it means more to me than the other majors,” says Michael.
Young Sim turned professional in November last year and seized his chance to do well in two Nationwide Tour events which were being played in his neck of the woods in February this year.
He finished second in the Jacob’s Creek Open at Royal Adelaide and again was runner-up in the
WINNER ON NATIONWIDE TOUR
New South Wales PGA championship. Then he won the Palmetto Pride Classic at Charleston, South Carolina in late October.
He sank a 6ft birdie putt on his 22nd birthday to win a play-off for the $90,000 first prize after a tie on 12-under-par at the end of the regulation 72 holes.
At the most recent count, Michael had won 220,432 US dollars and finished in 19th position in the Nationwide Tour for the 2006 season.
The top 20 are able to skip the Qualifying School process and go straight on to next year’s lucrative US PGA Tour. So, it’s “Yippee!” from Aberdonian Michael. From outstanding amateur to US PGA Tour player in one season. Eat your heart out Richie Ramsay!
Michael, 5ft 9in in his bare feet and weighing 71kg, has some pretty impressive statistics in his rookie year as a tour pro.
His longest drive on the Nationwide Tour has been 371yd (average 293.9yd).
He is fifth in the putting stats with an average of 1.742 putts per hole. He is 10th in the sand saves table (getting up and down in one or two shots from a bunker).
But the Aussie from Aberdeen rates putting as the strongest part of his game.
Michael has dual citizenship of Great Britain and Australia but is obviously not going to forget his roots. He proudly lists “Aberdeen, Scotland” as his birthplace in the Nationwide Tour players’ profiles.
Master Sim has never been back to Aberdeen since he left in short trousers in 1991.
That could change next summer when the Open championship returns to Carnoustie which, of course, is only 60-odd miles down the coast from the Granite City.
Michael’s management teams, SFX in Australia and Bud Martin in the United States, are not quite sure of their man’s movements next July and much would depend on whether he gained a place in the Carnoustie field through an international qualifying event in the States.
But it does seem a great chance to kill two birdies with one golf ball – play in the Open and visit the city where he was born.