O’Neal remembers the first time Slazenger sales rep Jim Janks walked through his golf shop at High Ridge Country Club in Lake Worth, Fla. Janks explained the new line of golf balls and then ended with a presentation showing the benefits of the Slazenger Founders Club program.
“They had charts saying, ‘Look, here is where your fund could grow to by the time you retire,’ ” O’Neal recalled. “I thought it was a great idea. The one thing we didn’t have with the PGA of America at that time was a retirement plan. Every other big company had one, but we didn’t have anything.”
One attribute that made O’Neal an outstanding head professional for 40 years was his meticulous nature. There may be no better example of his extraordinary attention to detail than his remembering a quirk in the Founders Club program that eventually would lead him down a bizarre investigative path.
Slazenger used two companies – MassMutual and Provident Midwest Annuity – to manage the Founders Club. Originally, participants received two Founders Club statements – one from Slazenger that listed both MassMutual and Provident Midwest Annuity balance information on it and another from MassMutual that also listed balances from both companies.
It wasn’t the most clear-cut situation, but O’Neal filed each of them away with the assumption that he could retrieve his money eventually.
“At that point, you didn’t pay much attention to it, because it didn’t really amount to much,” O’Neal said. “It was a long way off. It was like, ‘In 30 or 40 years when I retire, I’ll go back to revisit this whole thing.’ So you just file away your statements without thinking much about it.”
Before Slazenger’s retreat from the U.S. market, the MassMutual statements stopped including Provident Midwest Annuity balances, O’Neal said. That didn’t matter much to golf professionals at the time. But it set off O’Neal’s ensuing wild goose chase.
One attribute that made O’Neal an outstanding head professional for 40 years was his meticulous nature. There may be no better example of his extraordinary attention to detail than his remembering a quirk in the Founders Club program that eventually would lead him down a bizarre investigative path.
MassMutual, a large company many people are familiar with, continued to send statements. But when Slazenger ceased to operate in the United States, the Founders Club statements it sent stopped.
“Once I got to the point where I was nearing retirement, I started to go back and look at the statements,” O’Neal explained. “Something didn’t seem right because I just couldn’t find the Provident Midwest money. I looked on the internet and couldn’t even find anything about Provident Midwest Annuity. I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ ”
O’Neal’s options for figuring out this puzzle were somewhat limited. Branon had long since retired and says he had little to do with the financial specifics in the first place. Gorman, the man who had come up with the concept, died in March 2006.
Not knowing where to turn, O’Neal called MassMutual. He remembered the original plan administrator, even though they had never spoken, was named Eugene Marshall. It was printed at the top of Founders Club statements. But Marshall had retired. The man who replaced him was named Parks Stallings.
“So I got (Stallings) on the phone and he said, ‘Boy, I haven’t had a phone call like this in a long time.’ ” O’Neal recalled. “And he said, ‘There’s a problem here. You will never receive a statement because you never really received a statement in the first place from this Provident Midwest Annuity.’ ”
In that sentence was the crux of the problem. Provident Midwest was a small company based in Greenville, S.C., the same place where Slazenger’s U.S. operation had been located. Its name was included on Founders Club statements, but the company itself never sent statements to participants.
Provident Midwest Annuity had changed its name and moved, making it difficult to find. Stallings couldn’t find it. O’Neal had a close friend who worked in the insurance business and was certain he would be able to track down the company.
“He came back to me three of four days later and said ‘Tim, we have no idea where this company is,’ ” O’Neal said. “We can’t find it. Your money is probably gone.”
By coincidence, Stallings had an emotional attachment to O’Neal’s quest. His local golf professional in Jacksonville, Fla., also was a contributor to the Founders Club. Stallings wanted to help his pro.
To do this, Stallings did some sleuthing and found the former financial officer for Dunlop Sports Group Americas, Slazenger’s parent company.
Stallings’ pro didn’t have any statements, but Stallings’ intervention prompted Dunlop to issue the pro a check for $25,000. As for O’Neal, he only grew more suspicious that something was amiss.
O’Neal called Dunlop Sports Group Americas and reached a receptionist who had been working at the company for 28 years. She remembered the Founders Club and told O’Neal that he needed to speak with the company’s director of finance, Scott Morrison. Morrison was on vacation at the time, but the receptionist said he would call O’Neal back as soon as he returned from his trip.
Morrison called O’Neal on the exact day the receptionist said he would.
“He said to me, ‘Tim, you are 100 percent right,’ ” O’Neal recalled. “ ‘There is money in that account.’ He said, ‘I am the only person who can access that account because you will never receive a statement from them. If you give me your social security number, I’ll tell you how much is in there.’ ”
As anyone who has received a scam e-mail or phone call can understand, O’Neal wasn’t exactly willing to hand over personal information to a company he didn’t understand or a person he didn’t know.
“I was hesitant,” O’Neal said. “I didn’t want to give him my social security number. And he said, ‘Well, look at the top of your statement at your account number’ – back in those days, our social security number was our account number. So there it was, my social security number. The entire thing.”
After talking with Morrison further, O’Neal decided to disclose his information. A minute later, Morrison came back on the phone.
O’Neal had $22,000 in his account. He also had a lot of questions.
“Well, how do I redeem that?” O’Neal said. “And then I remember saying, ‘Can you tell me about your company and how your money is being administered?’ This guy was super honest and he was the key to the whole operation. Morrison said, ‘I am here and I am willing to help you get the money.’ ”
With a year left before his planned 2016 retirement, O’Neal didn’t want to take the money out and pay taxes on it. Stallings advised O’Neal to roll over the $22,000 into the MassMutual account. And that is exactly what he did.