Reinaldo Simoni has already played in two PGA Tour events. On some qualifier trips, he sleeps in his car.
Those facts sit awkwardly together if a PGA Tour start is viewed as the moment a professional golfer has arrived. For Simoni, 23, the inside-the-ropes part has happened twice, both times at the Puerto Rico Open. So has everything that comes after it: coaching to help cover entry fees, flights and travel, deciding which qualifiers he can afford to chase and trying to turn another good round into another place to play.
His first Tour start came with a scene no polished player biography could improve.
In 2025, Simoni was still a full-time student at UCF and working at Golf Galaxy to help fund his golf. He said he was cleaning a bathroom at work when he learned he had an opportunity to play in the Puerto Rico Open.
He ran out and hugged his coworkers.
Then he went home to Puerto Rico and played Grand Reserve, shooting 71-73 to finish his first two PGA Tour rounds at even par.
Put “PGA Tour start” on a résumé and the career looks considerably different. Simoni’s expenses did not disappear with it.
Reinaldo Simoni/Facebook
Puerto Rico Never Became Background
Golf began for Simoni at 5 years old in Puerto Rico, where he practiced at Dorado del Mar and competed around the island. Chi-Chi Rodríguez was among the people Simoni credits with influencing him early, and an old golf résumé contains a photo of the two from the 2012 Puerto Rico Open.
Simoni moved to Florida in 2013, but the competitive connection to Puerto Rico never disappeared.
By then, tournament golf already occupied plenty of his life. At 11, he made his first hole-in-one at Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course. His high school years at Lake Nona produced a long list of results, including district and regional championships and top-10 finishes at the Florida Class 3A state championship.
The record became particularly strong from 2017 through 2020. Simoni won a district championship with a 71 and a regional title with a 69 in 2017. A year later, he won the East Metro Conference, district and regional titles. In 2019, he won another regional championship and finished runner-up at the state championship. His 2020 season included a Disney Junior Open victory at 8 under.
Simoni’s old materials include enough scores and trophies to turn this into a junior-golf retrospective. The more important point is that he didn’t discover winning when professional golf came into view. He had been building that part of his game for years.
UCF became the next stop in 2021.
Simoni joined the Knights as a Division I golfer and eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Yet some of the most meaningful competition during that stretch again came wearing Puerto Rico’s colors.
He represented Puerto Rico on National Team squads that won Caribbean Amateur championships in 2023 and 2024. He also won the U.S. Am Tour Clermont Open in 2024.
By then, the level of the test was changing.
The Qualifier Became the Measuring Stick
Simoni began taking shots at PGA Tour qualifying opportunities in 2024. His materials include a Bermuda Championship Monday qualifier at ChampionsGate where he came close to advancing. He later shot a bogey-free 5-under in an RSM Classic pre-qualifier.
Those rounds matter differently for someone trying to find out where his game really belongs.
Junior trophies can tell a player what he was. College golf can tell him where he stacks up among his peers. A PGA Tour qualifier cares much less about history. Shoot the number or go home.
Simoni got his first Puerto Rico Open start in 2025. Then he found his way back in 2026, winning a final qualifier to earn another start.
That second trip changed his calculation. Simoni said the qualifying performance convinced him he was ready to make professional golf his full-time competitive pursuit. His sponsorship materials list March 2026 as the point when he turned professional.
Back-to-back PGA Tour appearances sound like a breakthrough, and they are, competitively, substantial. They did not hand Simoni a Tour card or a guaranteed schedule.
His own plans tell the story. PGA Tour pre-qualifiers and Monday qualifiers remain part of it. So do Korn Ferry Tour opportunities, PGA Tour Americas qualifying and Q-School. His immediate goal goes back to the tournament that gave him his two biggest stages: finding a path into the 2027 Puerto Rico Open.
That means building a professional career one entry at a time.
Two PGA Tour Starts Do Not Pay the Next Entry Fee
This is where Simoni’s story gets considerably more interesting to me.
A wide gap in professional golf exists between an accomplished amateur career and a secure place on a major tour. We see the players who make it through. We rarely see much of the accounting required while they are trying.
For Simoni, coaching has become part of that accounting.
He started his own coaching business and says the income helps cover tournament entry fees, flights and travel. On some qualifier trips, he has slept in his car.
There is nothing romantic about that part. An uncomfortable night does not make the next morning’s 68 any easier to shoot. A player can have PGA Tour experience, a Division I background, international team success and a lifetime of competitive golf behind him and still have to calculate whether another tournament makes financial sense.
That is where Simoni is right now.
He is also only 23.
“I’ve been sleeping in my car and trying to find ways to get to places,” Simoni wrote while describing his current pursuit. “I’m hungry and 23 years old. Nothing will stop me.”
The golfer in those two Puerto Rico Open starts is easy to put on a sponsorship deck. The golfer trying to reach the next qualifier may tell us more about whether this can become a career.
Simoni’s target is straightforward. Keep improving. Keep finding events he can enter. Get himself back to Puerto Rico in 2027.
His description was even simpler.
He wants to “compete anywhere I can earn an opportunity.”
Right now, that opportunity might begin with a Tour tee time, a Monday qualifier or another long drive to wherever the next opening happens to be.
For Simoni, all three are part of the same job.
PGA of America Golf Professional Brendon Elliott is an award-winning coach and golf writer who serves as Athlon Sports Senior Golf Writer. Read his recent “The Starter” on RG.org, where he is their Lead Golf Writer. To stay updated on all of his latest work, sign up for his newsletter or visit his MuckRack Profile.
