Marco Penge should be a PGA Tour sensation in 2026

View From The Fairway by Derek Clements

Twelve months ago Marco Penge was counting his blessings after holing a crucial six-foot putt that allowed him to retain his playing privileges on the DP World Tour. Had that putt not dropped the Englishman would have been heading back to the HotelPlanner Tour and what might have been an uncertain future.

Instead, he knuckled down, won three times in 2025, narrowly missed out on a place in Europe’s Ryder Cup team and heads to the Abu Dhabi Championship in second place in the Race to Dubai. And he will believe that he can still catch Rory McIlroy and deny the Northern Irishman his seventh crown. Penge has climbed into the top 50 in the world rankings, which means he will be teeing it up at The Masters in April, as well as playing in the other three majors. His PGA Tour card is safely locked up and he will be testing himself against the best in the world on the other side of the Pond in 2026.

It is why young European golfers play the game, chasing the ultimate dream of making it to the PGA Tour and playing for vast sums of money. Penge’s life has changed forever.

He will be one of 70 players teeing it up in the Abu Dhabi Championship and then heading to the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai as the curtain comes down on another unforgettable season.

If you finished in the top 115 in the Race to Dubai at the conclusion then your playing privileges for next season are secure, so the likes of Adam Scott (108), Sebastian Soderberg (111), Thomas Detry (113), Sami Valimaki (114) and Niklas Lemke (115) can all breathe a sigh of relief. Not that Scott seriously had to worry - as a former Masters champion, he would have been able to pick and choose where he wanted to play. And the same applies to Detry, who finally broke his duck by winning on the PGA Tour this year. In truth, Scott, Detry and Valimaki only played in a handful of tournaments this year, spending most of the season in America.

But then there is the other side of the coin. Some very high-profile golfers finished outside the top 115. These include Dylan Frittelli (116), Antoine Rozner (117), Bernd Wiesberger (118), Yannik Paul (121), Adrian Otaegui (122), Robin Williams (131), Edoardo Molinari (137), Alex Levy (140), Thomas Aiken (152), Zander Lombard (160) and Ross Fisher (165). 

You may remember an Indian golfer by the name of Shubhankar Sharma. In 2017 he won the Joburg Open and the following season he added the Maybank Championship and looked to have the world at his feet.

This season he made 28 starts and finished 178th. He made just seven cuts with not a single top-30 start. Where does he go from here?

And then there is Wiesberger. He ended the 2019 season in third place in the Race to Dubai and in 2021 became the first Austrian to play for Europe in the Ryder Cup. He became a serial winner, claiming eight victories on the DP World Tour and two on the Asian Tour.

In 2022 his head was turned by LIV and he signed on the dotted line. It backfired in spectacular fashion and he was dropped and returned to the DP World Tour last year. He could have been forgiven for thinking that he would be able to pick up where he left off but it hasn’t worked out that way. He still has one of the sweetest swings on the planet but something is missing. For starters, he has begun to struggle on the greens. So having had it all, what next for the Austrian, who is now 40 years old?

Nicolas Colsaerts, of Belgium, is a former Ryder Cup player and one of the best ball strikers the DP World Tour has ever seen. He has battled with some health issues and after a bitterly disappointing campaign has decided to walk away from the game. Eddie Pepperell has made similar noises and Mike Lorenzo Vera is another who has come to the conclusion that enough is enough.

There is no rhyme nor reason to any of this. They say that form is temporary but class is permanent. I can guarantee that most of the players who have lost their DP World Tour cards would give their right arms to rediscover the form that brought them to our attention in the first place.

And, of course, it is not just in the DP World Tour where he have witnessed some horrible struggles.

Thriston Lawrence has enjoyed huge success in and around Europe and gained a PGA Tour card for 2025. He looked like a golfer whose game was made for America but it has not worked out that way. He is going to lose his card. Ironically, he could win it back. After being unable to hit a barn door in America, he returned to Europe and promptly won the European Masters. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that decent play in Abu Dhabi and Dubai could see him collect one of the 10 PGA Tour cards on offer. Whether he will want to accept it this time is a different matter. 

Barrng a miraculous finish to the year, and with time fast running out, Matteo Manaserro, Victor Perez, and Valimaki will all be heading back to the DP World Tour after a shocking 12 months in America.

Matthieu Pavon won the Farmers Insurance Open in 2024. It was a result that surprised everybody, including the Frenchman. He went on to enjoy a fine debut season in the USA. This year? 23 starts, nine missed cuts and not a single top-40 finish. His win at Torrey Pines means he is secure for 2026 but he currently languishes in 166th place in the FedEx Cup standings.

All of the above should provide a salutary lesson for Penge. All logic dictates that he should be a sensation in America but, as the likes of Lawrence will testify, there are absolutely no guarantees.