Troon Transition Plan Review
Review of Troon Transition Plan for Sun Lakes Country Club (SLCC)
Exhibit A
September 2, 2026
Overall assessment
The plan is appears to be little more than a corporate marketing piece to demonstrate that Troon understands the importance of a transition plan. It appears to be a standard document which has had global changes made to make it appear custom to SLCC (pictures, Sun Lakes references, and dates provided to make the start date seems realistic. It is not a sufficiently robust transition management plan for the Master Board to rely upon to assure a smooth transition and protect Sun Lakes members.
It only demonstrates that Troon has an awareness of the many major functional areas that need attention—HOA administration, accounting, HR, golf, food and beverage, retail, racquet sports, swim/fitness, IT/CINC, property, procurement, insurance, budgeting, and governance. It also provides dates and identifies Troon personnel for many activities.
It does not provide an adequate governance and accountability framework for determining whether those activities have actually been completed successfully, whether critical risks have been resolved, and who has authority to make decisions when issues arise.
The transition is phased over roughly August through year-end, with final assessment/go-forward recommendations contemplated for early January 2027. That is preferable to treating the management-company change as a single handoff date.
The early stages appropriately emphasize information collection. The August 31–September 6 activities, for example, contemplate collecting employee census information, homeowner records, payment history, open items, financial records, governing documents, insurance information, leases, permits, licenses, vendor contracts, access credentials and related administrative information. That is exactly the type of inventory required before operational control changes.
The plan also calls for functional assessments rather than simply assuming existing practices should continue. Property, accounting, sales and marketing, HOA operations, human resources, clubhouse design, swim and fitness, racquet sports, golf operations and retail are addressed at various points. There are also specific milestones such as the 2027 budget draft, financial-results packages and 30-, 60- and 90-day transition progress reports.
Finally, the plan identifies a Troon transition team and assigns named Troon participants to numerous activities. That creates at least a starting point for accountability.
Where the plan is insufficient
The principal weakness is that activities are scheduled, but accountability for outcomes is not sufficiently defined. The Master Board should require the following additions before treating this as the controlling transition plan:
A single accountable transition executive/project manager. There are many Troon participants, but the plan needs one person accountable to the Master Board for the entire transition—not merely people responsible for individual assessments.
A RACI or equivalent responsibility matrix. Every critical transition item should identify who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. This becomes particularly important because the organizational chart contemplates a General Manager between the Master Board and operating functions, while your question indicates that a GM has not yet been identified.
Measurable completion criteria. “Accounting Assessment,” for example, is an activity. The Board needs to know what constitutes successful completion: reconciled bank accounts, verified opening balances, authorized signatories established, receivables reconciled, controls documented, payroll verified, etc. The same principle applies throughout the plan.
A formal risk and issue register. There is no apparent consolidated list of transition risks, probability/impact rating, mitigation action, owner, deadline and escalation status. For a transition affecting member funds, employee payroll, homeowner records, access systems and club operations, this is a significant omission.
A critical-path/dependency schedule. Some tasks cannot safely proceed until others are complete. The plan should identify dependencies and distinguish “must be completed before takeover” items from improvements that can occur during the first 90–120 days.
Explicit member-protection controls. The plan should separately identify controls covering member financial information, ACH/payment information, homeowner records, privacy/security, gate/access credentials, assessment collections, member credits/deposits, outstanding disputes, architectural applications, violations and member communications.
Financial-control handoff procedures. This should include bank authority, cash controls, purchasing authority, credit cards, accounts payable, payroll, receivables, reserve funds, investment accounts, reconciliation responsibility, opening/closing balances and independent Board verification.
Contract and legal obligation tracking. The document contemplates reviewing contracts, insurance, leases and governing documents, but the Board should receive an exceptions report identifying expirations, termination provisions, liabilities, unresolved obligations and decisions requiring Board action.
Formal acceptance/sign-off. Each critical work-stream should culminate in a deliverable accepted by an authorized SLCC representative. Without acceptance criteria, an activity can be reported as “complete” even when important exceptions remain.
An escalation protocol. The plan should state which issues Troon can decide, which require Board approval, who can authorize emergency action, and what dollar/risk thresholds trigger immediate Board notification.
The absence of these elements is particularly important because the plan appears to put considerable emphasis on Troon performing assessments and reporting results, rather than on a jointly controlled Board/Troon transition process.
The Master Board's role
The Master Board should not attempt to become the interim General Manager collectively. That would be inefficient and potentially create conflicting instructions to Troon staff.
At the same time, in the absence of an identified GM, the Board cannot simply delegate the transition to Troon. Troon is both the incoming management organization and the party performing much of the transition work. The Board therefore needs its own governance mechanism. Establish a temporary Master Board Transition Steering Committee immediately.
The committee could consist of perhaps a Master Board member, supported as necessary by SLCC's legal counsel, finance/audit resources and other subject-matter expertise. One Board member should be designated Transition Committee Chair and single Board liaison to Troon.
The governance structure would effectively become:
Master Board → Transition Steering Committee/Board Liaison → Troon Transition Leader → Troon functional teams until a permanent General Manager assumes responsibility and is fully acquainted with both Sun Lakes and Troon’s policy, processes, and resources.
This does not mean that the committee manages employees or daily club operations. Its purpose is owner oversight: priorities, decisions, risk management, acceptance of deliverables and escalation.
What the Board should require from Troon
Rather than asking Troon to rewrite its entire presentation, I would require a Master Transition Control Schedule sitting underneath it. That document should turn every scheduled activity into a manageable commitment.
Special concern created by the absence of a General Manager
The organizational chart is important because it appears to envision the General Manager as the operational bridge between the Master Board and the club's functional departments. With that position vacant, there is a governance gap precisely when unusually high coordination is required. The General Manager must have intimate knowledge of both Sun Lakes HOA governance and operational components, but Troon’s corporate policies, procedures, and resources.
The Master Board should require Troon to designate an Interim Executive-in-Charge with clear authority and physical presence requirements until the permanent GM begins. That individual should be accountable for coordinating all Troon work-streams and should report to the Board's designated transition liaison.
Without this, there is a substantial possibility of either a decision vacuum or, conversely, individual Board members becoming involved in operational decisions.
The scheduled 30-, 60- and 90-day progress reports are useful, but not frequent enough during the highest-risk portion of the transition.
For approximately the first 8–10 weeks, a weekly transition meeting between the Troon transition leader and the Board Transition Committee should be required. The discussion should use a one-page dashboard covering schedule status, critical milestones, red/yellow issues, financial-control readiness, HR/payroll readiness, systems/data readiness, member-impact issues, decisions needed from the Board and items overdue.
A more detailed written status report could be provided every two weeks, with the 30/60/90-day reports retained as formal Board-level checkpoints.
Most importantly, the report should contain an exception section. The Board does not need to manage hundreds of completed tasks; it needs immediate visibility into anything that could affect member service, member money, legal compliance, employees or continuity of operations.
Member protection should become an explicit work-stream. The current plan largely organizes the transition around operating functions. The Master Board should add a separate “Member Protection and Continuity” work-stream that cuts across all of them.
Before operational responsibility is considered successfully transferred, the Board should obtain affirmative confirmation that:
Member funds and balances are reconciled; member and homeowner data are secured and accessible; payments can be received and accurately posted; payroll can be processed; critical vendors will continue service; insurance coverage is uninterrupted; licenses and permits remain valid; access/security systems operate; emergency contacts and procedures are established; open member issues have owners; and members know where to obtain assistance beginning on Day 1.
Those are the outcomes members will experience. They should therefore be explicit transition success criteria rather than implicit consequences of Troon's functional assessments.
Bottom line
The Master Board should not approve the existing document as a complete transition management plan without supplemental controls being jointly developing the accountability structure described above.
The biggest issue is not the obvious absence of sufficient activity details. The weakness is the absence of a clear owner-side governance, accountability, risk, acceptance and escalation framework tying all of those activities together.
This is problematic because there is currently no identified General Manager, that weakness becomes more consequential. The Master Board should fill the governance gap through a temporary Transition Steering Committee, one designated Board liaison, one Troon executive accountable for the transition, a formal delegation-of-authority matrix, and weekly exception-based reporting. Once the GM is hired and appropriately on-boarded, responsibility can be formally transferred from the committee structure to the GM, but the ad hoc committee should still be used to provide oversight.
If those mechanisms are established, the Troon schedule could become the foundation of an effective transition. Without them, the Board is largely dependent on Troon's internal management of its own transition and may discover problems only after they have affected operations or members.