Golf.com- Thomas Fleetwood, 58, of Clermont, Fla., spotted an odd notification on his Wells Fargo bank account Friday night.
As a PGA teaching pro and a caddie at Streamsong Resort, he’s not exactly in the business of wiring funds. On Saturday morning, that notification had six figures attached to it. Thomas’s checking account was $154,480 richer. That’s a stunning sum for most Tom Fleetwoods out there (there are more than you’d think), but it’s no big deal for the 11th-ranked player in the world, better known as Tommy, who tied for 12th at the British Open just 17 days ago. The mix-up occurred because of a “clerical” error by the European tour , according to Tommy’s wife and manager, Clare. Via e-mail she explained that the tour had apologized and that “apparently the payments were made manually, not on automated system and there are two TF’s somehow?” Some of the accounting confusion stemmed from the fact that Thomas was also a pretty decent stick in his day, if not of the world-class variety. “Back in ’89 I played a tournament, I can’t remember if it was the European or Challenge tour,” Thomas said. “It was the Lyon Open in France, but [the European tour] have my information from trying to get on their senior tour.” Though Thomas was unable to carve out a place with the Staysure Tour, his bank information did, which is why it isn’t all too surprising that, when manually entered, a mistake between two Tom Fleetwoods could be made. An honest mistake, to be sure, but a six-figure mistake nonetheless, and a mistake that was Thomas’s to correct. It’s just that banks aren’t open on Saturday…or Sunday. Fully intent on rectifying the mistake he labeled “humorous,” Thomas told some friends about it. It got his mother all excited. Over the weekend it was funny for him just to think about, or to glance at his Wells Fargo mobile app. He’d take care of redirecting the funds during the week. As is the life of a teaching pro and caddie, Thomas was too busy to make a bank trip Monday. Tuesday was his day off and he simply forgot to visit the bank, adding a bit of context to his “meh” comment. Only on Wednesday morning did he receive a reminder via an ominous email from the tour. “It just said, ‘Wrong deposit, please send it back. Here’s the information to send it back,’” Thomas said. “I emailed them back and I said, ‘Well, I plan on sending it back, but you’ve got to excuse me that I’m not going to send it to this thing you’re sending me randomly in email. But it will be sent back.” Thomas went to work Wednesday, drove over to his local Wells Fargo on the way home, and asked for the funds to be redirected. Just like that his bank account was back to normal. “I’m poor again,” he said laughing. His duty was simple, and as of 5 p.m., it was done. It just wasn’t completely settled. Soon enough, he saw his name on golf websites, and he saw that Tommy had no idea his money went elsewhere. Not until early evening was he finally able to contact Tommy’s team. ----------- It's easy to find this story humorous, as it's objectively funny that an operation as big as The British Open made the type of mistake you'd expect from a sloppy college kid haphazardly using Venmo but instead with approximately 11,000 drunk pizzas worth of money at stake. It appears both Tommy Fleetwood's took this screw-up in stride, so the fact that it was made in the first place is laughable, as all is well that ends well. That being said, the wrong Tommy Fleetwood is a better man than I, for I would be absolutely irate if this happened to me. Never mind how many years would have been taken off my life by the rollercoaster my heart would looped through upon open seeing a six-figure notification pop up on my phone, because that pales in comparison to the amount of years taken off my life by having to make a goddamn trip to the bank to account for someone else's stupidity. You're telling me that not only did the wrong Tommy Fleetwood have to give back over $154,000, but he had to inconvenience himself in the process? I'll tell ya, if I don't read about some type of sizable reward coming his way soon than I'll be left with even less hope for humanity than the wrong Tommy Fleetwood has currently been left compensation for his time and effort. We've got one wealthy entity frivolously tossing around a stupid sum of money and another wealthy entity being too well-off to have any idea it went missing in the first place, and the 58 year old man of humble means is the one that has to run around breaking his back to make things right? I wish The European Tour would step to me asking to redirect the funds they flung around all willy nilly, just so I could tell them to redirect their goddamn attitude. They are lucky they messed with the right wrong Tommy Fleetwood, for a less understanding Tommy Fleetwood (with a loose understanding of both paper trails and the law) might have gone off the grid and become fleet of foot in trying to make them earn back every penny of their idiotic mistake.
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