Prepare for a lot of your golf buddies to start changing their names to those of successful professional golfers. Thomas Fleetwood, a teaching pro and caddie at Streamsong Resort in Florida, received an unexpected, yet welcome notification on his phone on Friday night: $154,480 had been deposited in his Wells Fargo bank account.
But why?
No joke, a friend received Tommy Fleetwood’s Open Championship winnings in his bank account last weekend!! They have the same name and he was a PGA pro but still, how does this happen? Didn’t believe him until I saw it…good thing he is an honest guy! pic.twitter.com/bE534xfYDV
— #Break30 Golf Short Game School (@GregThornerGolf) August 8, 2018
Thomas Fleetwood, who is 58, obviously shares a name with the 11th-ranked player in the world, Tommy Fleetwood, and a clerical error made by the European Tour sent the younger Fleetwood’s Open Championship earnings to the elder Fleetwood.
The European Tour had Thomas Fleetwood’s bank information on file because he had competed in a European Challenge Tour event and attempted to qualify for the European Senior Tour. When it came to doling out the money from last month’s Open, Tommy Fleetwood’s manager and wife, Clare, said that the wire transfers were done manually and someone inadvertently sent the six-figure sum to the wrong Fleetwood.
“It just said, ‘Wire Transfer,’ so I had no clue what in the world it was,” Thomas told Golf.com.
On Wednesday, he received an email from the European Tour requesting the money be returned, which the elder Fleetwood had been planning to do all along.
“(The email) 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.”
As for the rightful earner of the $154,480, he’s at a place in his life where he didn’t even notice the cash hadn’t come in.
“I honestly didn’t know anything about it. I wouldn’t even know if I’d been paid or not because I don’t really look. It looks pretty genuine and they are looking into it and I’m sure (the European Tour) feel pretty bad about it. It’s a funny story,” Fleetwood told the Press Association this week at Bellerive ahead of the PGA Championship. “It’s just something I don’t really look at but I’ll get on top of that!”
Nice to meet you, I'm Eldrick Woods. https://t.co/g3uDsxxsHj
— Zam (@ThaGreatZambino) August 8, 2018
*Changes name to Dustin Johnson* https://t.co/hlsvOHjyq7
— Alex Perry (@AlexPerryNCG) August 8, 2018
