How one shuttle ride might’ve cost one Korn Ferry Tour player his job

A shuttle ride may have cost one Korn Ferry Tour player his job.

Wilson Furr missed the cut Friday at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Lecom Suncoast Classic – and will now likely be reshuffled out of most upcoming events – after the 24-year-old Jackson, Mississippi, native was among three players penalized for taking an unauthorized shuttle ride from a tournament volunteer midway through their second rounds.

“This sucks,” Furr told GolfChannel.com via phone on Friday night after his flight home landed in Birmingham, Alabama. “There’s no way around it. It just sucks. To start the day, probably one of the bigger rounds I’ve played in my career, and I knew it, and for this to happen then, just ugh.”

The news was first reported by Monday Q Info’s Ryan French.

Furr and his playing competitors, Alejandro Tosti and Mason Andersen, were each assessed two-stroke penalties for violating Model Local Rule G-6, which states, “A player or caddie must not ride on any transportation. A player operating under a stroke and distance penalty is always authorized.”

The supplemental rules sheet for this week’s event, however, did specify that “automotive transportation is permitted during play from No. 7 green to No. 8 tee only.” The shuttles were also transporting players from the driving range to Nos. 1 and 10 tees prior to their rounds.

“But the places we took the shuttle to and from, that was not authorized,” Tosti said.

Tosti said he was the first of the three players to walk off the 18^th green at Lakewood National Golf Club in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, and through a tunnel under a grandstand when he noticed a volunteer sitting in an empty three-rowed golf cart, the same type that had shuttled them to the 10^th tee earlier in the day. Furr added that the shuttle was designated as such via signage.

“I asked the guy, ‘Are you giving rides to the first tee?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, jump in,’” Tosti recalled. “I know that I cannot jump in a cart that is not official, but this was almost like organized. It almost seemed like someone sent this guy to give us a ride. It was ready, waiting for us to walk off the green and give us a ride to the first tee, and that guy apparently was not supposed to be there.”

The volunteer, tasked with taking players between the range and their starting tees, had apparently stopped along his route – and then, clearly not knowing the specific rule either, gone rogue. The afternoon wave had yet to begin, and there were five groups behind Tosti, Furr and Andersen still needing to turn.

Furr guessed that the shuttle driver had stopped to watch the group hit their putts through the tunnel opening.

I mean, we literally would’ve run into his cart if we kept walking,” Furr said. “… Just a classic case of bad place, bad time.”

A few holes later, while Furr, Tosti and Andersen were walking off the fourth tee box, a rules official approached them and asked them how…