Spend any length of time in conversation with Connor McKinney and, in the back of your mind, you would be forgiven for thinking that his accent has more going on than the United Nations. It’s universal, a lingua franca. It’s like he’s speaking in tongues.
It’s not like that. He’s a 23-year-old golfer from Perth not a Pentecostal snake-handler.
But McKinney does own an accent you can’t quite place, because it seems to come from several different places. Part Aussie, part Scots, maybe some college American. Is there South Africa in there? Singapore? Guam?
Put it to McKinney that there’s a fair bit going on, and he’ll nod along. “It’s got everything, I know — I don’t know what it is. No one can guess. I have to tell them. Scots think I sound Aussie; Aussies think I’m Scottish. I’m a nomad,” he says.
At the age of 13 McKinney turned up in Perth with his parents from Scotland. The family had come out a year earlier to visit friends for Christmas, and fallen in love with the city, the light, the 30-degrees at Christmas lunch.
“We loved it, and didn’t want to go home,” McKinney says. “Went back, applied for visas, moved as soon as possible.”
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Fast forward to November of 2025 and McKinney is Australia’s – and probably Scotland’s, if not Guam’s – latest DP World Tour card holder after thriving in a brutal-sounding Q-School. Across three stages, 14 rounds and 252 holes, McKinney didn’t so much as battle as thrive. He says his game had been building towards it.
“I’d had a good season; I’d had a few Challenge Tour starts since January, so it was a good progression,” McKinney says. “Starting in Asia, then playing Tartan Tour in Scotland — it felt like every month I was improving after a pretty horrific season last year. I had to build myself back up.”
That he did. Only a triple-bogey on the seventh hole in the final round of first stage gave him pause. But he dug into whatever reservoir of resilience those who make it through these long-marches do, and came home strong.
“I was four or five under from there. That was as close as it got. I played really well in second and final stage and made very few bogeys. That was my goal — keep it as stress-free as possible,” McKinney says.
A 62 in the first round of the final stage, at Infinitum Golf, south-west of Barcelona, was a nice buffer. “It gave me a good sense of confidence — like, ‘I think I’ll be all right here.’ It was a good round: nine birdies, nine pars.
“My mindset was two top-20 finishes would give me a DP card, simple as that. And the way I was playing, I was confident it would happen. But it’s different once you peg it up. You still have to go play it. It’s two weeks in a row — 180 holes — a lot can happen.”
What happened was an eagle on the last at Infinitum for a six-under in the fifth round and a total score of 24-under which placed him second behind runaway South African Zander Something (37-under).
“The eagle on the last in round five made me feel pretty good: ‘OK, I still need to play tomorrow, but I’m confident.’ But you can’t get ahead of yourself because anything can happen. You’ve just got to knuckle down.
“The final round was pretty flawless: hit 17 greens, didn’t want to make a bogey, and did a pretty good job of that.”
Bookies all terrified to go first with their Australian PGA odds in case they misprice Connor McKinney pic.twitter.com/j764s1FBsL
— Ben Goodwin (@BGinge8) November 24, 2025
Indeed he did. And here he is, Connor McKinney, ahead of his first round as a card-carrying member of the DP World Tour and about to have his fourth crack at the PGA Championship of Australia.
He’s decompressed from the Q-School marathon with a week in Bali where he stood up on a surfboard in the warm waters of the north Indian Ocean. And he thought about golf not at all. He reckons he knows himself and knows what works.
“When I came out of amateur golf [in 2022], I was feeling good. Won the Australian Amateur, the [St Andrews] Links Trophy, all that. But pro golf is just different. People tell you that and you think, ‘How different can it be?’ But you really just have to throw yourself in. You start off without many great results and you start searching.
“But I had a good team keeping my head straight. Playing 22 events a year teaches you how you operate week to week. That’s all it was — finding what works.”
Connor McKinney in action during day one of the Jacques Leglise Trophy at Aldeburgh Golf Club in 2019. PHOTO: Getty Images
Back in Australia, McKinney will try not to place any extra significance on the next two weeks than he would any other fortnight.
“I’m trying to win the golf tournament,” he says. “The game feels good. It’s the start of a DP Tour career, so I’m excited.”
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