DULUTH, Ga. -- When asked to sum up his year, Gavin Coles got right to the point.

“I’ve played five tournaments. That says it all,” he reported.

The BellSouth Classic is Coles’ third start of the year on the PGA TOUR, and the 64 he shot in Thursday’s opening round is a career low for the 37-year-old Aussie.

Normally, a good opening round in a late-March event would give a player reason to look forward to a productive spring and summer. But Coles, known at the “Angry Ant” for his diminutive height and emotional feistiness, doesn’t have that much time.

He needs a good week -- now. Playing on a minor medical exemption after cracking a rib at last year’s John Deere Classic, Coles entered the 2006 season with just a five-tournament window in which to earn $267,213 and match the $626,736 that Nick Price won in 2005 to finish 125th on the money list.

With a missed cut at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am and a tie for 49th at the Chrysler Classic of Tucson, Coles came to Atlanta $259,533 short with only three tournaments left.

“Everybody wants to play this TOUR,” he said. “Everybody in the world who plays professional golf would love to play and win on the PGA TOUR. I mean, that’s what we all grew up to do. It would be huge to actually do that. It’s a great course, it’s a great event, and it would be just – it would be the icing on the cake.”

Coles understands his situation, but he doesn’t want to put too much pressure on himself. “Nobody expects me to do any good. Any pressure will be what I put on myself,” he said.

Others might not expect much, but Coles knows he is playing better due to the work he has done with his coach, Gary Edwin, who also works with Bay Hill Invitational champion, Rod Pampling.

“I’ve been working with Gary really hard for two weeks trying to get my golf swing to somewhere so that I can hit the ball where I’m looking, not somewhere else,” Coles said.

The swing worked wonders on Thursday. Coles, who started his round on the back nine, holed a 195-yard 5-iron from a fairway bunker on the 17th hole for an eagle to get him to 5 under. A birdie at the par-five 18th, and another lasar iron from 157 yards that hit the flagstick and stopped 20 inches from the hole for another birdie at No. 1. He made a 21-footer for another birdie at the par-4 fifth, then offset his only bogey by holing a 50-footer for birdie at the par-3 eighth to get to 8 under.

“My swing’s getting better all the time, and I’m getting more comfortable out here,” Coles says. Still, he doesn’t want to set the expectations bar too high. When asked what kind of score he was looking to shoot on Friday, he said, “I don’t know, I’m going to hit my tee shot off the first, and I’m just going to play one shot at a time.”