It was one of those moments that defines professional golf.
This was not going to affect the top of the leaderboard, it was much more important than that.
Marco Penge, a 26-year-old pro from Horsham in Sussex, was completing his first full year on the DP World Tour and playing for his livelihood. Amid the fading light of a late and still sweaty Friday afternoon in South Korea, his job was on the line.
“It’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever been,” Penge, the Portuguese Open champion of 2023, admitted.
The equation was simple. The task – given the acute circumstances – anything but. He needed a birdie on the final hole at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club of Korea, to make the cut.
Failure to get up and down on the closing par-five at the Genesis Championship would rob him of the chance of doing enough at the weekend to keep his card.
The torture of Qualifying School or a return to the more humble surrounds of the Challenge Tour beckoned. The weeks away from his newborn son could have been rendered a waste of the most precious time in anyone’s life.
Through the back of the green in two lusty blows, it was now down to touch, feel and nerve. Penge coaxed his chip to five feet, a decent effort.
The birdie putt was straight up the slope to the target. He had holed thousands of such putts on his way to joining Europe’s elite tour; now he needed one more to keep his fledgling career afloat.
He stroked the ball with an assured touch and it duly disappeared.
“I was so relieved,” he said. “My body was shaking, I felt really emotional.”
He promised himself a good meal that night, fortification to complete a job only half done. This was his 10th week in the past 11 striving for the Race to Dubai points that would leave him in the top 114 places in the DP World Tour standings.
In that intensive closing stretch of the season he had posted his best finish at the Irish Open where he shared 12th place, but missed six cuts. In Incheon last weekend he still needed to climb around 30 places on the leaderboard to complete the job.
A third-round 69 gave Penge, who had begun his pro career on the lowly EuroPro tour in 2017, a sniff of keeping his card. A bogey-free front nine on Sunday was completed in two under par but a big finish was still required.
He was not going to win, the title was a duel between Tom Kim and eventual champion Ben An, which was just the contest the home fans wanted to see. Penge’s battle, though, was way more intense and pressurised.
The Clitheroe-based Englishman responded with three birdies in the last five holes. A closing 67 elevated Penge to a share of 22nd and brought enough points to finish 110th in the standings.
His playing privileges were secured with just four places to spare. “It’s probably the best I’ve played all year,” he smiled.
“To play the way I did under the pressure I was under, I’m pretty speechless right now and just over the moon that it is done.”
After such a marathon stint, his thoughts turned immediately to home. “My son was born four months ago and I feel like I’ve been with him for about a week,” he added. “These times are worth it.”
Penge won last year’s Challenge Tour Grand Final. He is a talented player, who enjoyed a fine amateur career including victory in the prestigious McGregor Trophy.
But all of those who spent last week scrapping for their cards are highly skilled golfers trying to cope with the unique pressures of an unforgiving individual sport.
“I suffer with performance anxiety as it is,” Penge admitted. “It is just who I am as a person, it is how I was born.
“Certain scenarios I find really tough when I’m out on the course.”
He revealed that before that final round he had woken in the early hours and engaged in long phone conversations with his wife and coach. They told him that “it didn’t matter” and that “there was more to life than this”.
Penge added: “The pressure that us guys have to deal with is immense, especially when you are trying to keep your card out here.
“This was my first year and I don’t want to fall back. I feel like I deserve to be here and feel like I’m good enough to be here.
“The past six weeks have been a bit nervy but what I did was was just work as hard as I possibly could, that’s all you can do and hope that takes care of everything else.”
Ultimately it did, but others were less fortunate. Surviving on tour can be a brutal business, as fellow Englishman Eddie Pepperell can attest.
The 33-year-old from Oxfordshire has won twice on tour. He played each of the last 11 weeks of the regular season in an effort to keep his card.
Pepperell was tantalisingly close, firing a closing 68 in Korea to finish 34th in the tournament but climbing only four spots to 120th in the standings.
He can reflect on what might have been from so many of the tournaments in that closing stretch. What if he had not taken nine at the 16th in the second round of the Alfred Dunhill Links when he was lying a comfortable 20th on the leaderboard?
But that is the brutal nature of professional golf in the strata below those chasing major titles and Ryder Cup berths. It is what gives the game its sporting integrity, what makes it worth watching, even when titles are not on the line.
