BRISBANE, Australia — Perks come thick and fast when you take the golf world by storm, as Marco Penge is discovering. A PGA Tour card, starts in the Players Championship and majors, almost $ 4 million earned this year in prize money. But the big-hitting Englishman, who won three DP World Tour titles this year, has marked down one particular milestone on his 2026 calendar for Wednesday, April 8.

“As a father, I'm most looking forward to playing the Par 3 [Tournament at the Masters]; seeing my little boy having a hit in the white overalls at Augusta; how good’s that?,” the Englishman said at this week’s Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland, a DP World Tour event that kicks off the 2025-26 season. Penge headlines a field that also includes Adam Scott, Cameron Smith, Min Woo Lee and others.

Penge, 27, earned that Masters debut via his Spanish Open win, which Augusta National chose as one of six national opens to award the champion a start at Augusta National. “For me [the Masters] is the best tournament to watch … the best players in the world are together, [the traditions like] the green jacket, Augusta National, the conditioning, the scenery,” says Penge, who finished second to Rory McIlroy in Europe’s Race to Dubai rankings to secure the first of 10 PGA Tour cards offered to the top DP World Tour finishers.

Penge will be one to watch at Augusta. When he played the first two rounds with McIlroy at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship recently, golf fans saw his prodigious power off the tee and potent iron play. Penge led the DP World Tour last season in strokes gained off the tee. He averaged 319 yards and almost 60 percent of fairways.

Aside from his devastating length, the lad from Horsham, West Sussex, has an interesting journey from English Premier League (EPL) soccer pitches in England to one of the more remarkable surges up the World Ranking and onto the PGA Tour.

Penge, a tall, athletic guy, has Italian heritage through his father, an aerial engineer. Penge was a talented goalscorer as a teenager and even trialed with Reading F.C. and Southampton F.C., soccer clubs, who have both had stints in the EPL.

“When I was 13, Dad was like, you've got to choose football or golf,” Penge says. “I'm pleased I chose golf, but I would like to have had a crack [at soccer] and see where I would have gone. I was a number 10, so I sat in front of the center midfield [position]. Football is my passion. I love golf, but it is my job. I am properly into the strategy and tactics of football. I’m a huge Arsenal [F.C.] fan.”

Marco Penge finished second to Rory McIlroy in the DP World Tour standings.

Andrew Redington

Penge says he took the competitive fire of soccer into golf. That was on full display in October last year when, ranked No. 406 on the Official World Golf Ranking, he held onto his DP World Tour card by a single putt. At the tour’s event in Korea, he holed a birdie putt at the to make the cut and eke into the top 115 who kept their cards. Only 14 months later, he’s World No. 30.

“That putt gave me confidence,” Penge says. Asked if he faced a tougher putt in 2025, he answered “definitely not.”

Penge believes he is one of many players out there on the lower rungs of the World Ranking who are potentially 12 months away from an enormous year.

“I think even less than 12 months; one week you could be having a terrible year and things come together and you end up winning,” he said. “What that does to your confidence and belief moving forward is massive.”

Scrapping for his job in Korea was particularly impressive, given a rules infraction was hanging over his head. A DP World Tour disciplinary panel found Penge had placed bets on multiple golf events—not on himself or in tournaments he was competing in—in 2022 and 2023. The DP World Tour found the integrity of those events “had not been compromised” and Bunkered magazine reported the average bets were only around £24. But Penge was given a three-month ban with one month suspended. In an interview with Bunkered last month, Penge said the hiatus was “a blessing in disguise” because he changed swing coaches and his daily approach to tournament preparation. He owned up to his mistakes. “I broke the rules,” Penge told Bunkered. “Since I was a young boy, I’ve had bets on the majors and stuff … It was never my intention or understanding to, but I broke the rules.”

Two months after returning to competition, Penge triumphed at the Hainan Classic in China in April for his maiden DP World Tour win. In August, he birdied the final hole to defeat Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard at the Danish Golf Championship. In October, he took down Dan Brown in a playoff to claim the Open de Espana.

“China was a huge achievement because winning on the DP World Tour was a dream as a kid,” Penge says. “Winning in Denmark was different because I was the underdog going up against probably the best player in Denmark and his home crowd. [The Spanish Open] was probably the biggest tournament I've won from a history side of things with the names on the trophy like Seve [Ballesteros] and Jon Rahm.”

So, what’s next? After the Australian PGA at Royal Queensland, the golf course for the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, Penge will tee up once more on DP World Tour at next week’s Nedbank Golf Challenge. He will then make a move with his wife and son from the U.K. to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., to take up his 2026 PGA Tour card.

Although, it seems Penge’s heart will remain with the DP World Tour. He intends to have a decent schedule of European events in the fall of 2026 once the PGA Tour season wraps up.

“I’m looking forward to obviously playing at Bay Hill and Riviera and Torrey Pines, but the ones I'm looking forward to the most are the Players Championship and the [WM] Phoenix Open,” he said. “I want to contend in the majors and try to get a win next year on the PGA Tour. That would be pretty cool in my first season. I want to get in contention as much as I can.

“I think the DP World Tour, for me, is a tour I really want to support; hence why I'm here [in Australia] this week. I want to try and play at least 10 times next year on the DP World Tour, so hopefully I can go well on the PGA Tour, [and] not have to play the fall events and come back to Europe. That's my goal.”

On Wednesday in Australia, Penge sat with reporters and said he would soon kick back and soak up what he’d achieved this year.

“The experience I had in Abu Dhabi and Dubai [with] the Ryder Cup boys there, and to feel like I’d earned their respect,” Penge said when asked the most fulfilling congratulations he received. “All of the guys were saying how good a job I’d done.

“However my career goes now moving forward, I've proved a lot to myself and achieved so much. At the same time, I want to win more and [now I have] a sense of freedom. Hopefully I can top off a few more in the next few years.”