Pro suspended by DP World Tour for betting on golf tournaments

The DP World Tour has suspended 26-year-old English pro Marco Penge for betting on golf tournaments.

In a statement Wednesday, the tour did not say which events Penge bet on but did report that he wagered neither on himself nor on the progress of tournaments in which he was competing, leading the disciplinary panel to rule that “the integrity of such events had not been compromised.”

Penge’s resulting two-month suspension took effect Dec. 13 and will expire on Feb. 13. The tour also fined Penge £2,000.

DP World Tour members are prohibited to gamble on tournaments under Regulation 3(a)(i) of the tour’s integrity program. That stipulation reads as follows: “No Covered Person shall either directly or indirectly bet or instruct any other person to bet on the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any professional or elite amateur golf event anywhere in the world.”

In its statement, the tour added that “Penge’s immediate admission of breach and co-operation throughout the investigation warranted mitigation reflected in the eventual sanction imposed.”

Penge is the 414th ranked player in the world. He was promoted to the DP World Tour after winning the Challenge Tour in 2023. This year, he narrowly held on to his DP status for 2025 by finishing 110th in the Race to Dubai Rankings. In his most recent start — at the Australian Open late last month — Penge finished 27th.

This is not the first time a professional golfer has been suspended for betting on golf. In 2023, the PGA Tour suspended Korn Ferry Tour players Vince India and Jake Staino for six months and three months, respectively, for gambling on PGA Tour competitions, which violates the PGA Tour’s Integrity Program.

In 2023, the Tour bolstered its bet-monitoring capabilities by partnering with watchdog U.S. Integrity. In a statement at the time, the Tour said, “U.S. Integrity will provide supplementary integrity-monitoring services via its proprietary dashboard, in an effort to proactively identify irregular contest-level, officiating and wagering patterns by conducting analysis across many data sets.

Though both the DP World Tour and PGA Tour have strict betting policies for their players, both tours also have deals with betting platforms designed to drive fan engagement. In 2023, the DP tour made OlyBet its official betting operator. In 2019, the PGA Tour signed a multi-year agreement with DraftKings to become the Tour’s official daily fantasy game partner.