The season-ending Korn Ferry Tour Championship determines which 30 golfers will gain promotion to the PGA Tour for 2024. With 16 of those spots already locked up, that left everyone battling for the other 14.
Shad Tuten was in a good position to grab one of those spots, as he was sitting 29th on the Korn Ferry Tour Points List heading into the 72-hole, no-cut finale. He then posted scores of 69-73-69 over the first three days to sit just outside the top 10.
But on Sunday, Tuten signed for a 76, which included a two-shot penalty at the soggy Victoria National Golf Club in Newburgh, Indiana.
According to Golf Channel:
Upon arriving in the scoring area, Tuten was notified by a rules official that television cameras had shown him improperly applying the lift-clean-and-place rule in the 15th fairway. Tuten initially lifted his ball, cleaned it and placed it, only to have the ball roll forward. As Jim Duncan, the KFT’s vice president of competition and administration, explained, Tuten then should’ve tried to re-place the ball on the exact spot as the previous placement, and then if the ball moved again he could place it at a near-point. Tuten, however, skipped that second step.
“When he did not try and replace that ball right back on the same spot, that’s when he got two shots for playing from the wrong place,” Duncan said.
When it was all said and done, Tuten slid back from the No. 29 to No. 32 on the outside looking in at the 2024 PGA Tour season.
Tuten will get a chance to try to make up for the gaffe, but he’ll have to wait two months. Players who finished Nos. 31-60 on the KFT points list have earned exemptions to the Final Stage of PGA Tour Q-School, where the top five finishers and ties will earn their 2024 PGA Tour cards. The final stage is Dec. 14-17 at TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course as well as Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
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