Getting into a taxi at full speed and telling the driver to follow that car seems a bit outdated now. Cinema helps us stay updated without needing to visit the spy shop every month. There’s nothing better to keep track of someone’s every move than to place a tracking device on them. That’s precisely what we’ll have to do with the Australian Connor McKinney, the brand-new winner this Sunday of the Webex Players Series Perth hosted by Minjee Lee & Min Woo Lee.
McKinney has captured all our attention with that victory and what he’s been doing in recent months. He’s Australian, although he was born in Scotland. He’s 23 years old and as an amateur, he won the Australian Amateur Championship and the St Andrews Links Trophy. No small feat. That same year, he played the Australian PGA Championship and the Australian Open, both part of the DP World Tour, and made the cut. In 2023 and 2024, as a professional, his progress stalled. He got stuck on the HotelPlanner Tour, probably due to, among other things, the treacherous and always delicate world of expectations.
It was in 2025 when he broke through. He played several tournaments on the Australian circuit and came very close to winning the Vic Open. Months later, his first professional victory arrived. It was on the Tartan Pro Tour, the Scottish professional circuit, paying homage to his origins. And there’s nothing better to honour the pioneers than winning the Musselburgh Masters, on the legendary East Lothian course. The next thing he did was comfortably secure his DP World Tour card at the School, and now he has just achieved his first major victory on an international circuit by storm.
Because here, the issue is not just the victory itself, but how he did it. He led from the first to the last round. His most challenging moment came at the end of the third day. Things weren’t going his way, and he found himself three shots off the lead. Well, he finished with a hole-in-one and a birdie on his last two holes and went home first, alone, with a two-shot margin.
A special guest on the first tee 🎤@minjeegolf | #WebexPlayersSeries pic.twitter.com/pF9ayG406h
— WPGA Tour of Australasia (@WPGATour) January 11, 2026
It was not an easy Sunday for him. All eyes were on his young shoulders. Has his time come?, everyone repeated on the 1st tee just before the game started. Beside him, his great rival for the win was the Englishman Andrew Johnston, the legendary Beef, a player as popular as he is experienced. As if that weren’t enough, the starter for the star match was Minjee Lee, a three-time Major winner, and on the 18th, waiting to present the trophy, was Min Woo Lee, the great young star of Australian golf…
Well, McKinney started the day with a birdie on the 1st and a stratospheric eagle on the 2nd, sinking a putt of about 12 metres. That is, six under in his last four holes. There he took a five-shot lead, and he delivered the coup de grâce with three more birdies up to the 9th hole. In total, with nine to go, he had an eight-shot lead. Resolved quickly and very cleanly.
He dropped up to three bogeys on the back nine, but it didn’t matter anymore. The victory was in the bag. His victory. The one he had been waiting for. He finally won with a final round of 69 strokes and a total of -18. The second place, shared by Curtis Luck and golfers Kirsten Rudgeley and Abbie Teasdale, was four shots behind. Andrew Johnston, with a final round of 74 strokes, finished in sixth place, heavily hampered on the greens throughout the weekend.
Thus, the tracking device is now installed on Connor McKinney. His next stop is the Bahrain Championship of the DP World Tour. We’re not saying he’s the favourite, but he must be considered a contender.
Let’s remember that the Webex Players Series Perth is a mixed tournament of the PGA Tour of Australasia. Women and men play the same course, for the same prize fund and the same trophy. The difference is that they play a shorter course. In this event, we had a Spaniard, Samuel Espinosa, who missed the cut by one shot after the second round.
