A brand new Mizuno Pro S-3 6-iron arrived for Marco Penge in Spain on Thursday.
The issue? The Open de España, which Penge was playing in, ended last Sunday. He was long gone.
Yet Penge had a different, brand new Mizuno Pro S-3 6-iron in the bag Sunday as he took down Daniel Brown in a playoff to win his third DP World Tour title this season and punch his tickets to the 2026 Masters and Open Championship.
How and why Penge needed a new 6-iron — and later pitching wedge — can be told by Mizuno Senior Tour Representative on the DP World Tour, Joe Beck.
After a disappointing week at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, where he finished tied for 91st, Penge and his caddie, Max Bill, arrived in Spain for the next event when they realized Penge’s 6-iron was damaged to the point of non-conformance after hitting a rock with a swing at the Dunhill.
Beck and the Mizuno DP World Tour team only found out on Tuesday and their truck wasn’t at Club de Campo Villa de Madrid because of logistical reasons. So Beck had a replacement 6-iron built for Penge and shipped out that day from England, hoping for delivery by Thursday morning.
Problem solved? Nope, that was the club that was finally just delivered this week.
“It’s a little bit more difficult for us now,” Beck told GOLF. “Trying to ship into Europe with Brexit and shipping regulations, time frame it takes a lot longer than it should to get stuff to players.”
As Beck kept tracking the package, he soon realized the replacement club wasn’t going to get to Penge.
But the 27-year-old Englishman carried on with a replacement Titleist 620 CB 6-iron, as reported by John Whyte of SMS on Tour. With a third-round 64, Penge took a four-shot lead into Sunday.
And that was while playing most of that round down another club.
On the second hole, Penge pulled his tee shot left and saw it settle just inside a tree. Basically standing next to the trunk to try and advance the ball, he took a swing with his pitching wedge, trying to stop his swing before hitting the tree, but it was of little use.
The shaft collided with the wood of the trunk and snapped instantly as the ball sailed farther left of the green, still 71 yards away from the pin.
Remarkably, Penge had no such tree trouble with his third and played his next shot to 14 feet and then curled in the putt for an unlikely par. At the time, the preserved Penge’s one-shot lead before he caught fire later in the round, making birdies on eight of 10 holes from Nos. 7 to 16.
“Like finding a bag of gold,” an announcer on the broadcast said.
