Marco Penge was presented with the Seve Ballesteros Award, the DP World Tour’s Player of the Year honour for 2025, following his opening round at the Genesis Scottish Open on Thursday. The 28-year-old Englishman called the recognition “surreal.”
The award, named after the late Spanish great and voted on by DP World Tour members, was handed to Penge by Guy Kinnings, the Tour’s Chief Executive. Penge had been announced as the 2025 Player of the Year in February, but the formal presentation came at The Renaissance Club this week.
“There’s a lot of players out here on the DP World Tour, so to get that recognition from my competitors and also friends and I suppose big family, it’s great to have won this award,” Penge said. “Obviously being named after the European great Seve Ballesteros, it’s an award that I’ll never forget that I won.”
Marco Penge wins the 2025 Seve Ballesteros Award 🏆
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) February 17, 2026
A three-win breakthrough
The award followed a 2025 season that transformed Penge’s career. In just his second full year on the DP World Tour, having battled to keep his card at the end of 2024, he won three titles: the Hainan Classic in April for his maiden victory, the Danish Golf Championship in August, and the Open de España in October after a play-off.
That final win, in one of European golf’s most historic national championships, secured his places in both The Masters and The Open in 2026. By season’s end, Penge had finished second to Rory McIlroy on the Race to Dubai Rankings Delivered by DP World, moved inside the top 30 of the Official World Golf Ranking, and become the leading player among the ten who earned dual PGA Tour membership for 2026.
Comeback and perspective
The presentation came after a difficult spell. Penge had not played in competition since the US PGA Championship in mid-May before returning at last week’s BMW International Open, where he finished in the top ten. He has been coping with recurring issues affecting his ear, neck and nervous system after a viral infection at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai last November. Those problems eventually prompted him to pull out of the US Open in June.
Penge said before his comeback that he felt “90% of the way there” in his recovery. Now back competing in Scotland, where he finished runner-up at the same event last summer, the time away has allowed him to reflect on what he accomplished.
“I felt like last week was the first time I actually kind of had a realisation of what I did achieve last year,” Penge said. “I was just playing, playing, playing. And obviously I was forced to have some time off. And then my first one back is back where I was successful, and I could just feel a sense in the air from players and staff and caddies. It’s been my favourite perspective.”
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Simon Bale
Simon Bale is the publisher of Golf Today. A low single-figure handicap golfer, he was previously a major shareholder and course reviewer for Top100GolfCourses.com for over a decade, starting in 2010. Through this role, he developed extensive knowledge of golf course design and architecture while playing more than 300 courses worldwide.